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Our merry sheдpes did jumpy.

When I do pitchy, ‘tis my pride (meaning of the verb, cf pitch-fork).

How gaя the paths be where we do strolly.
Besides ODVs and intransitive verbs, there is also an ergative: doors did slammy.
In the imperative, infin. -y only appears with a negative: don’t sobby!

The optional use of the -y ending is an advantage in dialect poetry for metre or rhyme:

Vor thine wull peck, an’ mine wull grubby (rhyming with snubby)
And this ending probably accounts for a phonetic peculiarity of South-west dialects, namely the apocope of to arguy (the former dialect pronunciation of to argue), to carry and to empty, reduced to to arg, to car and to empt.

In the grammatical part of his Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, Barnes insists on the aspectual connection between do and infin.+y:

“Belonging to this use of the free infinitive y-ended verbs, is another kindred one, the showing of a repetition or habit of doing as ‘How the dog do jumpy’, i-e keep jumping. ‘The child do like to whippy’, amuse himself with whipping. ‘Idle chap, he’ll do nothen but vishy, (spend his time in fishing), if you do leвve en alwone’. ‘He do markety’, he usually attends market.”

Barnes also quotes a work by Jennings in which this South-west feature was also described:

“Another peculiarity is that of attaching to many of the common verbs in the infinitive mode as well as to some other parts of different conjugations, the letter -y. Thus it is very common to say ‘I can’t sewy’,
I can’t nursy’, ‘he can’t reapy’, ‘he can’t sawy’, as well as ‘to sewy, to nursy, to reapy, to sawy’, etc; but never, I think, without an auxiliary verb, or the sign of the infinitive to.”

Barnes claimed, too, that the collocation of infin. +y and the DO was unthinkable: ‘We may say, “Can ye zewy?” but never “Wull ye zewy up theдse zкam?” “Wull ye zew up theдse zкam” would be good Dorset.”

Elworthy also mentions the opposition heard in Somerset between I do dig the garden and Every day, I do diggy for three hours (quoted by
Jespersen and by Rogers). Concerning the so-called ‘free infinitive’,
Wiltshire-born Rogers comments that ‘it is little heard now, but was common in the last century’, which tallies with the lack of examples in the SED.
(This point is also confirmed by Itialainen) Rogers is quite surprised to read of a science-fiction play (BBC, 15 March 1978) entitled ‘Stargazy in
Zummerland’, describing a future world in which the population was divided between industrial and agricultural workers, the latter probably using some form of south-western speech, following a time-honoured stage tradition already perceptible in King Lear (disguised as a rustic, Edgar speaks broad
Somerset).

To sum up, after to, do (auxiliary), or a modal, the formula of the
‘free infinitive’ is intr. V > infin. + -y/0 where ‘intr.’ implies genuine intransitives, ODVs and even ergatives. As a dialect-marker, -y is now on the wane, being gradually replaced by 0 due to contact with Standard English.

1.2 Of + DO

The other typical feature of south-western dialects is not mentioned by Wakelin, although it stands out much more clearly in the SED data. This is the optional use of o’/ov (occasionally on) between a transitive verb and its DO. Here are some of the many examples. Stripping the feathers off a dead chicken (Orton and Wakelin) is called: pickin/pluckin ov it (Brk-loc. 3); trippin o’ en (= it) (D-loc. 6); pickin o’ en (Do-loc. 3); pluckin(g) on en - (W-loc. 9; Sx-loc. 2).

Catching fish, especially trout, with one’s hand (Orton and Wakelin) is called: ticklin o’/ov em (= them) (So-loc. 13; W-loc. 2, 8; D-loc. 2, 7, 8; Do- loc. 2-5; Ha-loc. 4); gropin o’/ov em (D-loc. 4, 6); ticklin on em (W-loc. 3, 4; Ha-loc. 6; Sx-loc. 3); tickle o’ em (Do-loc. l) (note the absence of -in(g)).

The confusion between of and on is frequent in dialects, but although on may occur where of is expected, the reverse is impossible. The occasional use of on instead of of is therefore unimportant. What really matters is the occurrence of of, o’ or ov between a transitive verb and the
DO. The presence of the -in(g) ending should also attract our attention: it occurs in all the examples except tickle o’ em, which is exceptional since, when the SED informants used an infinitive in their answers, their syntax was usually identical with that of Standard English, ie without of occurring before the DO: glad to see you, (he wants to) hide it (Orton and
Wakelin).

goal) and verbs which are only syntactically transitives (/ hear you: goal

The use of of as an operator between a transitive verb and its DO was strangely enough never described by Barnes, and is casually dismissed as an
‘otiose of’ by the authors of the SED, even though nothing can really be
‘otiose’ in any language system. Rogers points out that ‘Much more widely found formerly, it is now confined to sentences where the pronouns en, it and em are the objects.’ This is obvious in the SED materials, as, incidentally, it is in these lines by Barnes:

To work all day a-meдken haя/Or pitchen o’t.

Nevertheless, even if his usage is in conformity with present syntax, it is important to add that, when Barnes was alive, o/ov could precede any
DO (a-meдken ov haя would equally have been possible). What should also be noted in his poetry is the extremely rare occurrence of o’/ov after a transitive verb with no -en (= -ing) ending, which, as we just saw, is still very rare in modern speech:

Zoo I don’t mind o’ leдven it to-morrow.

Zoo I don’t mind o’ leдven o’t to-morrow.

The second line shows a twofold occurrence of o’ after two transitive verbs, one with and one without -en.

This -en ending can be a marker of a verbal noun, a gerund or a present participle (as part of a progressive aspect form or on its own), and o’ may follow in each case.

VERBAL NOUN

My own a-decken ov my own (‘my own way of dressing my darling’).

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