Cover not available

Article published In: English World-Wide
Vol. 37:3 (2016) ► pp.238–266

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Canny good, or quite canny?

The semantic-syntactic distribution of canny in the North East of England

 | Northumbria University
Published online: 18 October 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.37.3.01chi
The word canny has long been associated with the dialects of the North East of England, most typically in its adjectival sense. However, it has four distinct functions (adjective, adverb, intensifier and modifier in quantifying expressions), which this paper tracks in a diachronic speech corpus. Although the intensifier (e.g. it’s canny good) is documented in the Survey of English Dialects (Upton, Parry and Widowson 1994), it appears in the corpus later than expected with the profile of an incoming form. Results from a judgement task corroborate the corpus trends and show that people’s intuitions about intensifier canny correlate with age as well as the semantics and position of the following adjective, in such a way that shows the intensifier is not fully delexicalised. The present research highlights the value of combining production and perception data in establishing how the origins of a linguistic item affect its distribution in its new function.
References (63)
Corrigan, Karen P., Isabelle Buchstaller, Adam J. Mearns and Hermann L. Moisl. 2010–2012. “A Linguistic ‘Time-Capsule’ for the Google Generation: The Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English”. <[URL]> (accessed December 1, 2014).
Griffiths, Bill. 2004. A Dictionary of North East Dialect. Newcastle upon Tyne: Northumbria University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heslop, Richard O. 1892. Northumberland Words: A Glossary of Words Used in the County of Northumberland and on the Tyneside. Volume 11. London: English Dialect Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
OED Online. 2015. Oxford University Press. <[URL]> (accessed April 10, 2015).
Office for National Statistics. 2010. Standard Occupational Classification 2010, Volume 3: The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification User Manual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Orton, Harold. 1962. Survey of English Dialects (A): Introduction. Leeds: E J Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Orton, Harold, and Wilfrid J. Halliday, eds. 1963. Survey of English Dialects (B): The Basic Materials, Volume 1: The Six Northern Counties and the Isle of Man, Part III. Leeds: E J Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Upton, Clive, David Parry, and J.D.A. Widdowson. 1994. Survey of English Dialects: The Dictionary and Grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Joseph. 1898–1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. Volume 11. London: Henry Frowde.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Allen, Will H., Joan C. Beal, Karen P. Corrigan, Warren Maguire, and Hermann L. Moisl. 2007. “A Linguistic ‘Time-Capsule’: The Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English”. In Joan C. Beal, Karen P. Corrigan, and Hermann L. Moisl, eds. Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora, Volume 2: Diachronic Databases. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 16–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Altenberg, Bengt. 1991. “Amplifier Collocations in Spoken English”. In Stig Johansson and Anna-Brita Strenström, eds. English Computer Corpora: Selected Papers and Research Guide. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 127–148. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Andersen, Robert. 2004. “Regression Models for Ordinal Data”. In Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Alan E. Bryman, and Tim Futing Liao, eds. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, Volume 31. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. 941–942.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anthony, Laurence. 2014. AntConc (Version 3.4.1). Tokyo: Waseda University. Available from <[URL]> (accessed November 10, 2014).
Atkinson, John C. 1868. A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect: Explanatory, Derivative and Critical. London: John Russell Smith.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barnfield, Katie, and Isabelle Buchstaller. 2010. “Intensifiers on Tyneside: Longitudinal Developments and New Trends”. English World-Wide 311: 252–287. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beal, Joan C. 2004. “English Dialects in the North of England: Morphology and Syntax”. In Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider, and Clive Upton, eds. A Handbook of Varieties of English, Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 114–141.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “Enregisterment, Commodification and Historical Context: ‘Geordie’ Versus ‘Sheffieldish’”. American Speech 841: 138–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, and Marilyn Ford. 2010. “Predicting Syntax: Processing Dative Constructions in American and Australian Varieties of English”. Language 861: 168–213. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2006. “ The lady was al demonyak: Historical Aspects of Adverb all ”. English Language and Linguistics 101: 345–370. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, John R. Rickford, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Thomas Wasow, and Arnold Zwicky. 2010. “The Sociolinguistics of a Short-lived Innovation: Tracing the Development of Quotative all Across Spoken and Internet Newsgroup Data”. Language Variation and Change 221: 191–219. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Karen P. Corrigan. 2011a. “How to Make Intuitions Succeed: Testing Methods for Analysing Syntactic Microvariation”. In Warren Maguire and April McMahon, eds. Analysing Variation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 30–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011b. “‘Judge not lest ye be judged’: Exploring Methods for the Collection of Socio-syntactic Data”. In Frans Gregersen, Jeffrey K. Parrott, and Pia Quist, eds. Language Variation – European Perspectives III: Selected Papers from the 5th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 5). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 149–160. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, Karen P. Corrigan, Anders Holmberg, Patrick Honeybone, and Warren Maguire. 2013. “T-to-R and the Northern Subject Rule: Questionnaire-based Spatial, Social and Structural Linguistics”. English Language and Linguistics 171: 85–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 2007. Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, and Ann Williams. 2005. “Phonology, Grammar, and Discourse in Dialect Convergence”. In Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens, and Paul Kerswill, eds. Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 135–170. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Childs, Claire. 2013. “Verbal –s and the Northern Subject Rule: Spatial Variation in Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Constraints”. In Xosé Álvarez, Ernestina Carrilho, and Catarina Magro, eds. Current Approaches to Limits and Areas in Dialectology. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. 311–344.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corrigan, Karen P., Richard Edge, and John Lonergan. 2012. “Is Dublin English ‘Alive Alive Oh’?” In Bettina Migge and Máire Ní Chíosáin, eds. New Perspectives on Irish English. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia, and Guy Bailey. 2013. “Real Time and Apparent Time”. In Jack K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling, eds. The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (2nd ed). Malden, MA: Blackwell. 239–262. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M.W. 1977. “Where Have All the Adjectives Gone?” Studies in Language 11: 19–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doetjes, Jenny S. 1997. Quantifiers and Selection: On the Distribution of Quantifying Expressions in French, Dutch and English. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. “Degree Quantifiers”. In Francis Corblin and Henriëtte de Swart, eds. Handbook of French Semantics. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 83–98.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “Adverbs and Quantification: Degrees Versus Frequency”. Lingua 1171: 685–720. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elmes, Simon. 2005. Talking for Britain: A Journey Through the Nation’s Dialects. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gorman, Kyle, and Daniel E. Johnson. 2013. “Quantitative Analysis”. In Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 214–240.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heeringa, Steven G., Brady T. West, and Patricia A. Berglund. 2010. Applied Survey Data Analysis. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2006. “Corpora and Introspection as Corroborating Evidence: The Case of Preposition Placement in English Relative Clauses”. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 21: 165–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ito, Rika, and Sali A. Tagliamonte. 2003. “ Well weird, Right dodgy, Very strange, Really cool: Layering and Recycling in English Intensifiers”. Language in Society 321: 257–279. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackson, Howard. 1990. Grammar and Meaning: A Semantic Approach to English Grammar. New York: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel E. 2009. “Getting off the GoldVarb Standard: Introducing Rbrul for Mixed-Effects Variable Rule Analysis”. Language and Linguistics Compass 31: 359–383. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2009. “Pittsburghese Shirts: Commodification and the Enregisterment of an Urban Dialect”. American Speech 841: 157–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2006. The Social Stratification of English in New York City (2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Llamas, Carmen. 1999. “A New Methodology: Data Elicitation for Social and Regional Language Variation Studies”. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 71: 95–119.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lorenz, Gunter R. 2002. “ Really worthwhile or not really significant? A Corpus-based Approach to the Delexicalization and Grammaticalization of Intensifiers in Modern English”. In Ilse Wischer and Gabriele Diewald, eds. New Reflections on Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 143–161. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald. 2002. “Extremely interesting, very interesting, or only quite interesting? Adverbs and Social Class”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 61: 398–417. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Pure Grammaticalization: The Development of a Teenage Intensifier”. Language Variation and Change 181: 267–283. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Méndez-Naya, Belén. 2003. “On Intensifiers and Grammaticalization: The Case of swiþe ”. English Studies 841: 372–391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. 2000. “Early Modern English Lexis and Semantics”. In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 31: 1476–1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 332–458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad, Hans van de Koot, and Jenny S. Doetjes. 2004. “Degree Expressions”. The Linguistic Review 211: 1–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Partington, Alan. 1993. “Corpus Evidence of Language Change: The Case of intensifiers”. In Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, eds. Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 177–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pearce, Michael. 2011. “‘It isn’t geet good, like, but it’s canny’: A New(ish) Dialect Feature in North East England”. English Today 271: 1–7. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pichler, Heike. 2010. “Methods in Discourse Variation Analysis: Reflections on the Way Forward”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 141: 581–608. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ravindranath, Maya. 2011. A Wicked Good Reason to Study Intensifiers in New Hampshire. Poster presented at New Ways of Analysing Variation (NWAV) 401, Georgetown University.
Schütze, Carson T. 1996. The Empirical Base of Linguistics: Grammaticality Judgments and Linguistic Methodology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Mike. 2012. WordSmith Tools Version 6. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2005. “ So who? Like how? Just what? Discourse Markers in the Conversations of Young Canadians”. Journal of Pragmatics 371: 1896–1915. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “ So different and pretty cool! Recycling Intensifiers in Toronto, Canada”. English Language and Linguistics 121: 361–394. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., and Chris Roberts. 2005. “So weird; So cool; So innovative: The Use of Intensifiers in the Television Series Friends ”. American Speech 801: 280–300. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
VanderStoep, Scott W., and Deirdre D. Johnston. 2009. Research Methods for Everyday Life: Blending Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner, Elvis. 2010. “Survey Research”. In Brian Paltridge and Aek Phakiti, eds. Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. London: Continuum. 22–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wales, Katie. 2002. “‘North of Watford Gap’: A Cultural History of Northern English (From 1700)”. In Richard J. Watts and Peter Trudgill, eds. Alternative Histories of English. London: Routledge. 45–66.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Northern English in Writing”. In Raymond Hickey, ed. Varieties of English in Writing: The Written Word as Linguistic Evidence. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Stratton, James M.
2025. British English. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Pichler, Heike & Jenny Cheshire
2024. Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in England. In Language in Britain and Ireland, ► pp. 128 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2024. English. In Language in Britain and Ireland, ► pp. 9 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue