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watching a recording of the newsies musical. wondering (since this musical uses it FREQUENTLY to signal working-class speech, as do other forms of media) -- is "i makes" / "you does" (over-generalizing the 3sg) actually an attested pattern?
it seems more intuitive to me to overgeneralize the bare verb (make/do), since it's both less complex morphologically & used in more of the standard paradigm (1sg, 1pl, 2sg, 2pl, 3pl) ..... but obviously that wouldn't be as noticeable since it would only be erroneous in 3sg :P
was already thinking of it in the context of house-elf speech (due to @potternaught though i haven't brought this *specific* pattern up in a recording yet) and i'm wondering.... what the origin of it is. is it from a particular variety of english or is it totally an invention
also the accents in this production are all over the place generally but im fascinated that almost all of the newsies actors are doing (intermittent) æ raising, occasionally so high that when they're all chanting JACK JACK JACK it literally diphthongizes to /ei/
this show would be (and probably is, in some productions) a FASCINATING venue to portray a variety of new york city microcosms of language (via class, race, borough/neighborhood...) and the production im watching beefs that opportunity SO spectacularly it's incredible to see
half the time the actors are doing EYYY IM WALKIN HERE and half the time they're just using general, unmarked cornbelt american english. there's no rhyme or reason to it! even the guy playing jack is wildly inconsistent. it's amazing. i'm in awe
(i'm watching the 2017 theater recording on disney+. in all other aspects it's fantastic but the accents are absolutely hysterical and i'm not even FROM nyc)
update i'm realizing that the 3sg thing might be two separate issues... whether you can generalize the 3sg 'is' (you is, they is, we is) - and whether you can generalize the 3sg '-s' for other verbs productively (they knows, they gives, you makes), which is what this musical does
rei THINK ive heard/read 'you is' etc in real speech before but i genuinely do not know if the other type exists. pls let me know if you know more than i do about this
