Had did

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From a recent circuit court opinion on a case with defendants Ike Brown and the Noxubee County [Mississippi] Democratic Executive Committee:

… Mable Jamison, an independent notary, testified that Brown phoned her in an effort to dissuade her from collecting absentee ballots from voters that “his people,” such as Windham, intended to collect: “[h]e pretty much said that his people had did the initial leg work and I shouldn’t be picking up his ballots.”

(Hat tip to Victor Steinbok. An earlier version of this posting was posted on ADS-L.)

Two aspects to Jamison's had did: had plus PSP (past participle), possibly conveying simple past rather than past perfect; and did (rather than done) as PSP of the verb DO. The first of these is a well-known feature of AAVE, but the second hasn't been so much discussed, though it wasn't entirely new to me. The most common (non-standard) leveling of PSP and PST (past) forms for DO is in favor of done ("I done it yesterday") — OED2 lists it as colloquial, dialectal, and U.S. — but here the leveling is in the other direction, in favor of did, and it's not in the OED.

Call the quotation from Jamison example (1). Here are a few more "had did" examples:

(2) he was really upset that i had did this and sent his goons after me to bring me back to him. (link)

(3) omg i would soooo love it if they did "Reden" or "Wo sind eure hande"!!!!! i wish they had did an english version of that song too.. the beat is just so fun and makes me want to dance.. i should go look up the translation for it… (link)

(4) After a year we had did a song with a dude that was singin. [black speaker] (link)

(5) I didn't realize Cedeno had did that. That's funny. It takes Theriot 2 days to slug that much, wow. ! (link)

Some discussion.  I find the interpretation of (2), like (1), uncertain; (3) looks pretty clearly like a past perfect; (4) seems equally clearly to have AAVE had + PSP used as a simple past; and (5) could go either way, but I'm leaning in favor of the simple past (I don't know what the race of the writer was).

There are occurrences of PSP did outside of had did: perfect have/has did and passives combining a form of BE with did.

First, some perfect examples:

Ok i hate this man but i shouldnt have did that? [black writer] (link)

The only thing that I could have did that I can think of was clicked on a few sites to unsubscribe(HTML)porn sites … [race of writer unknown] (link)

"She shouldn't have did that."  [black speaker] (link)

Sometimes you can try and then you say "I'm tired of trying." I have did that. [black speaker] (link)

There are plenty more — including one wonderful "might would have did that" — most of them clearly from black speakers or writers.

Now some passive examples, in particular with was did:

Anyone knows how to fold paper with After effects like the video at 2:28? I know that maybe that was did by creating a stop-motion sequence but maybe there is a good way to do it in AE too (link)

The original version to "More Like You" was did by Michael Omartian, released in 1977 on his album "Seasons of the Soul" … (link)

I think what you did to PSC would be called vandalism if it was did by an anon user … (link)   

Peter further explained that this was did by the God who had raised Jesus … (link)

There are tons of these, and they don't seem to be particularly race-related. So, at least from a first sampling of the data, the perfect instances (forms of HAVE plus PSP did) seem to be heavily AAVE, while the passive instances (forms of BE plus PSP did) seem to be more generally usable (though both are non-standard) — an interesting split in the way PSP did is used.

[Added 3/24: several readers have pointed me to Missy Elliott's 2002 song "Work It", which has the line "Get a pedicure, get your hair did", with PSP did in a passivoid construction with GET.]



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