Abstract :
A number of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century dialect descriptions refer to
an unusual adverb + infinitive construction in southwestern and westMidlands dialects of
English. The construction is most often reported in the form of a formulaic phrase away
to go, meaning ‘away he went’, though it is also found with a range of other adverbs. In
addition, the same dialects also make use of a possibly related imperative construction,
consisting of a preposition or adverb and a to-infinitive, as in out to come! ‘Come out!’
and a negative imperative construction consisting of the negator not and the base form of
the verb, as in Not put no sugar in!. These construction types appear to be marginal at best
in earlier varieties of English, whereas comparable constructions with the verbal noun are
a well-established feature of especially British Celtic languages (i.e. Welsh, Breton, and
Cornish). In this article I argue that transfer from the British Celtic languages offers a
possible explanation for the use of these constructions in the traditional southwestern and
west Midlands dialects of English.
