Morphophonological processes

The Black Country is noted for its highly contracted negative modal forms, evidenced where possible using Painter’s (1963: 32–33) transcriptions, as well as respelling conventions, as follows:

Note also Mathisen (1999: 108)  can’t,  can’t have it.

Written evidence from Chinn and Thorne (2001: 74, 121) suggests that similar phonological processes may operate in Birmingham (at least in traditional working-class dialect), e.g. <dain’t> / <dain> didn’t. Chinn and Thorne (2001: 121) cite a form <mon’t> mustn’t. This could perhaps be a contraction of mustn’t, or derived from earlier (ME) maun ‘must’ + -n’t (Bm <mun> ).

There is evidence for the retention of the reflex of the OE form axian ‘to ask’ (rather than OE ascian) in <aks> ask.