"Is is"

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 2, 2004, at 10:52 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Is is"
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> So, Wilson, in a thousand years they'll know who was responsible....
>
> JL

Lord, I hope not! I've spent my life looking for the perfect language
or, failing that, trying to find a way to return English to the
pristine state that it was in in the '50's, when everyone "knew" that
the "correct" forms were, e.g.

wake (up)  woke (up)  wakened

awake  awoke  awakened

wake (up)  waked (up)  waked (up)

awake  awaked  awakened

Now, I ask you, what could be simpler than that? Is there any such form
as "(a)woken(ed)" in this set? Of course not! And why not? Because
everyone "knew" that any such form as that would be "wrong"! and
speaking of "wrong," how has it come about, that, despite historical
origin, *every* initial "r" is rounded? If you watch the mouths of
animated-cartoon characters, even *they* say such as "Oright"! And
every BE speaker once knew that the plural of. e.g. "my baby daddy" was
"my babies daddy" or "my babies daddies" and not - aaarrrggghhh! - "my
baby daddies," as even BET would now have it! What's a purist to do,
other than to cry himself to sleep at night? Sigh! One can only hope.

-Wilson Gray

>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: "Is is"
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> On Aug 2, 2004, at 7:58 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>> Subject: "Is is"
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>> -
>> --------
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>> Brian Kilmeade, anchor on "Fox & Friends," 2 Aug 04:
>>
>> "Isn't the good news is we've really got 'em now?"
>>
>> Slip of the tongue? Or a new syntactic twist on the "double is"?
>>
>> BTW, I discussed "double-is" with my intro to linguistics class in
>> November 2003, and none of the twenty-plus students were (consciously)
>> familiar with the construction.
>>
>> JL
>
> A linguist friend of mine, to whom I will be forever grateful - even
> though he refuses to believe that "CaribBEan" was ever the preferred
> pronunciation of "Caribbean" - pointed out to me that, in certain
> constructions, I was using a triple "is," e.g. "What the situation is
> is [lowered pitch+pause], is that I'm using a triple 'is' without
> realizing it."
>
> -Wilson Gray
>
>>
>>
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