The Expression of the Perfect: Variation in Southern and Northern Irish English

Abstract

[eng] The expression of the perfect in Irish English has been widely studied (Hickey 2007; Filppula 2016; Kirk 2017). However, scarcely have papers focused on regional variation nor provided a thorough analysis of their syntactic features. This present study fills the gap. It re-examines the vernacular forms of the after-perfect, the resultative, and the indefinite anterior by comparing their usage in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland from a synchronic perspective. It looks at their frequency of occurrence in the ICE-Ireland corpus, their grammatical variables, and their degree of acceptability on a native perception test. The results reveal that the after-perfect is conspicuously used in the South. The resultative is more dominant in the Southern corpus, yet equally acceptable in the questionnaire. The indefinite anterior is omnipresent in both territories. The main justification for this distribution is the influence of Celtic substratum, national identity self-identification, use of the Irish language, and globalization processes. Although their internal grammar did not condition regional variation, the paper concludes that these expressions are as regularized as the standard HAVE perfect.