innovators and followers (was Fed Up)

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Yes, and even this is not complicated enough. After all, if innovative forms 
didn't make some linguistic sense, followers will not follow the innovators 
(all other things being equal). So innovations of the "fed up with/fed up of" 
variety are probably real options for most people--i.e., a number of people will 
be inclined to innovate from time to time. Moreover, innovations surely begin 
variably--sometimes one will say one thing, sometimes another (for example, 
that Southern US "to" that occurs off and on in a sentence such as "Shall I ask 
him to call you?" and "They almost had the ceiling to fall on their heads" 
cf. Yankee "I helped him fry/to fry the bacon"). I first heard that as an adult, 
and I don't care how many times I hear it, I'll NEVER say it! My daughters 
never heard it from me, but THEY say it. And then social factors play a role as 
well: I am sure that as a child I heard both "He don't" and "He doesn't," but 
I quite regularly SAID "He don't" while (unconsciously) writing in my school 
work "He doesn't." I was a freshman in college before someone made me 
self-conscious about my spoken "He don't"--at which point I became a categorical "He 
doesn't" speaker.


In a message dated 12/22/03 11:23:54 AM, zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU writes:


> (just to be clear, let me remind
> everyone, again, that most speakers with an innovative form are not
> themselves the innovators, but merely the vehicles of the form's
> spread, so that it makes no sense to ask after the grammatical
> rationale for their usage.  they're just repeating what they hear.)
>