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A person I know often drops the "to be" which would normally be before the verb in a sentence. He'll say things like:

  • That needs fixed.
  • It needs upgraded.
  • They need looked at.

rather than

  • That needs to be fixed.
  • It needs to be upgraded.
  • They need to be looked at.

Is this just a personal quirk? Is it colloquial or archaic? It it grammatically correct? Does it have a name?

Billy Pilgrim
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    It's called reduction of function words. It's very informal. – Boondoggle May 27 '18 at 14:09
  • If you want to avoid the extra "to be", simply say "That needs fixing." – Hot Licks May 27 '18 at 14:47
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    All this discussion and all of the discussion on the "duplicate" posts is just amateur sociolinguistics. The phenomenon has been studied by professionals and the details are available at https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/needs-washed – John Lawler May 27 '18 at 16:07

1 Answers1

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Dropping the "to be" is grammatically incorrect, and colloquialisms are words or phrases, not habits, so it isn't a colloquialism. It's actually a regional dialect, used often in the southern United States but most famously attributed to Pittsburghese: http://theglassblock.com/2016/07/07/pittsburghese-expertise-dropping-to-be/

If you want to see more people who do this, look here: https://www.facebook.com/GrammarGirl/posts/10150827196390228

The umbrella term for this habit is zero copula, but I don't believe there is any other (aside from needs verbed). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics)#Zero_copula

natbergu
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