Some notes on the "needs washed" construction

Authors

Jim Wood, Yale UniversityFollow
Josephine Holubkov, Yale UniversityFollow
Ian Neidel, Yale UniversityFollow
Kaija Gahm, Yale UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

Volume

4

Issue

2

Abstract

This paper describes the geographic and social factors that correlate with the acceptability of the needs washed construction, based on the results of recent survey data. After briefly describing the survey methods, we discuss several ways to analyze the geographic distribution of the construction, focusing on the distribution of “hot” and “cold” spots across different versions of the construction. We find certain core areas where the construction is highly accepted, as well as core areas where the construction is highly rejected. Our survey looks at the effect of verb (need, want, like, and love), tense/modality (finite verb, modal would and would have), and population density (urban, suburban, rural). Moreover, we present maps that show how our results line up with previously proposed dialect regions of American English.

Recommended Citation

Wood, Jim, Josephine Holubkov, Ian Neidel and Kaija Gahm. 2022. Some notes on the needs washed construction. Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity 4 (2), 1–19.