I’ve over the past few months run into a fascinating bit of colloquial usage I had never noticed before. I’m curious about the usage and whether it’s common, and any linguists/dialecticians who want to comment about it. The usage is the appending of a “naked” past participle to a verb, in a circumstance where typically i would expect to see either a gerund in -ing or “to be” plus the past participle.
To set up a hypothetical example, let’s construct an adage: “Do whatever needs ___”. Standard usage, at lest in upstate New York where I spent most of my life and here in the Upper South, would follow that with “…doing” or, slightly more commonly, “…to be done”: “Do whatever needs doing” or “Do whatever needs to be done.”
What I’m seeing, and had not encountered before, is the usage: “Do whatever needs done” and similar constructions: “This transformer needs fixed.”
A lot of those using this variant seem to be from he Midwest. Is it common? Coincidence I’ve never run into it before 2008? Geographic spread for it?
It’s pretty common in Western Pennsylvania, particularly Pittsburgh. It may seep into parts of Ohio a bit, but pretty much everyone I know who uses that usage is either from Pittsburgh or affecting a Pittsburgh dialect.
It’s Pittsburghese, but I noticed it’s spreading in recent years. It’s increasingly common usage in the far eastern suburbs of Cleveland (Lake and Geauga counties). I’ve seen the usage in message board posts, when the poster is known not to be in or from the Pittsburgh area.
You can call me a yokel then. I grew up outside of Pittsburgh. I managed to become college educated without ever learning that such a construct was incorrect. (that may be more of a comment on the quality of my education, in Ohio no less) A bemused coworker (also in Pittsburgh, but not from here) pointed it out to me.
When you grow up hearing things like “my car needs washed” it’s not at all jarring.
I hear it all the time in Oklahoma and always have. It may tend to be more commonly used in the rural and working class dialects, but certainly isn’t confined to those.
No, everyone else is correct. It’s a regional feature of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area (third bullet point), as well as possibly elsewhere. It’s not “poor grammar”; just a non-standard dialect feature.
I’ve started doing this in text messages - I still can’t bring myself to use things like ‘u’ for ‘you’ and number substitution for words, but I will send messages like ‘text me when you need picked up’ and similar phrases. I didn’t realise it was common in any verbal dialects.
I’m in southern Ontario, for demographic purposes.
That’s not actually the same usage, is it? “The car needs washed” ends in <some kind of verb thing>, but “the dog wants out” ends in an adjective (or something else non-verbal).
I say “the dog wants out” here in Southern Ontario, but I never heard of the “needs washed” usage until I started reading the SDMB.
That example I gave is different, but still “wrong” (I put that in quotes because someone is bound to call me an evil prescriptivist otherwise)… But the same thing applies; I’ve heard people say “the dog wants fed” or whatever as often as I’ve heard the “needs” thing.
Either way, the wrong part of speech follows. In both cases, it should be a noun (“RNATB needs hookers and blow”) or a passive infinitive (“RNATB needs to be blown”).
That said, in British English, you can say “the car needs washing” or “the carpet needs hoovering (vacuuming)”.
Interesting how you acknowledge, via discussion of British English, that usage does legitimately differ from region to region, yet still seem to only begrudgingly grant this same courtesy to the construct in question…
