Y'all / Squat

[Donald M Lance]

on 5/29/02 1:37 PM, Donald M Lance at lancedm at MISSOURI.EDU wrote:

> I'm responding with a new Subject line primarily to get this item more
> findable in searches for 'y'all' -- may be unnecessary, but I'm doing it
> anyway.
>
> I've been trying to figure out whether I c'd say "y'all xys'z" but am not
> sure.  It almost seems Oll Korrekt, but I suspect it would depend on the
> pragmatics of the psycho-social interchange at the moment of the generation
> of the sentence -- e.g., for the kind of emphasis dinnis wanted
> (hyper-Southern tauto-apposition?).
>
> DMLance

P.S.  Or is there some pragmato-syntactic vocative implicature in this
seeming apposition?

DMLance
>
>
> on 5/29/02 12:00 PM, sagehen at sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM wrote:
>
>> James A. Landau writes:
>>
>> (>Now for a serious question: is it just me, or do others on this list find
>> it jarring to >hear "y'all" followed by an appositive, i.e. "y'all Kentucky
>> corn-crackers kin"?)
>>
>>> P.S.  Yes, I am resolving the grammatical ambiguity in the message by
>>>> construing "kin" as "relatives of the corn-crackers" rather than as a
>>> misspelling >of the auxiliary verb "can".
>> ~~~~~~~~
>> Why?  It strikes me as a bit of a stretch -- having to assume that dInIs is
>> addressing his own kin -- when it isn't really necessary to your point,
>> anyway.
>> "Kentucky corn-crackers" can still stand in apposition by itself.
>> A.Murie
>>
>