Can anyone of you natives explain to me the english grammatical rule(s) of putting a pre-"a" in front of some adjectives? , like "the train keept a-rolling", "We were a-heading for.." etc. Is it OK to do it in general when you need an extra syllable or is it just OK in certain forms and contexts?

  //  Peter

Can anyone of you natives explain to me the english grammatical rule(s) of putting a pre-"a" in front of some adjectives? , like "the train keept a-rolling", "We were a-heading for.." etc. Is it OK to do it in general when you need an extra syllable or is it just OK in certain forms and contexts?

  //  Peter



That extra "a-" in front of some verbs serves to explicitly notate the near-silent vowel sound of the transition from the hard consonant ending on the word immediately preceding the verb.  "the train kept rolling" has a subtle, nearly silent, short "a" sound in the transition between the "t" of "kept" and the "r" of "rolling".  Adding the "a-" makes that silent short "a" audible and exaggerated for poetic/lyrical/metrical effect.

But in other cases, that "a" does not serve to explicitly notate a real though subtle transitional vowel.  "We were heading" has no such implied, near-silent "a" between "were" and "heading".  In these cases, adding the "a-" is purely a poetic/lyrical/metrical device which suggests an artificial though smooth transition between the "r" sound at the end of "were" and the aspirant "h" at the start of "heading".

The simplest explanation of this "a-" is that it's an American speech-folkway, commonly used in American traditional/country music simply for poetic/lyrical/metrical effect.

The simplest explanation of this "a-" is that it's an American speech-folkway, commonly used in American traditional/country music simply for poetic/lyrical/metrical effect.


Nicely put, Johnny DD. In other words, it's lyrical laziness or simply an affectation. My theory is that since Dylan got away with it ("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), lesser songwriters figured that they should try it too. It's hard not to like "Keep on a-rockin' me, baby," but, let's face it, no one talks like that. And when you reach the depths of "Baby, I'm-a Want You," well, nuff said.

But if your question is whether you should be a-usin' this for comedic effect, I'm a-recommendin' you do so. I'm a-waitin' for the result.

xoxox
Spaff

Nicely put, Johnny DD. In other words, it's lyrical laziness or simply an affectation. My theory is that since Dylan got away with it ("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), lesser songwriters figured that they should try it too. It's hard not to like "Keep on a-rockin' me, baby," but, let's face it, no one talks like that. And when you reach the depths of "Baby, I'm-a Want You," well, nuff said.

But if your question is whether you should be a-usin' this for comedic effect, I'm a-recommendin' you do so. I'm a-waitin' for the result.

xoxox
Spaff


Sometimes it works, but that's atypical

Sometimes it works, but that's atypical


A-men.

xoxox
Spaff

Many a thanks! (Google gives 634 hits on that phrase so I guess it´s by the rule unless it´s a stand-alone expression). I´ll probably work some a-xxx into one of my parodies soon enough.

And speaking of stand alone expressions. I´m guessing that the expression "A-OK" is not by the mentioned rule about a hard consonant ending to the previous word, since the two most common alternatives that I can see/imagine would be "it´s A-OK" and "that´s A-OK". Am I right (no pun intended) in assuming that´s more to be understood as an in phrase reference to something being A as in Grade A, very good, nice, etc?