Non-standard dialects and linguistic data

This paper considers the particular problems in working on the syntax of non-standard language varieties and how these can be overcome. It offers a case study of the singular concord structure in Belfast English, showing the extent to which data is available from intuitions and from a corpus, and the relative contributions of both of these to understanding the syntax of this structure. It argues further that the relatively informal methods by which syntacticians generally collect intuition data are in fact the optimal method of establishing speakers’ grammars, and better in this than more formal methods.