Those pesky negatives (revisited)

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 11, 2004, at 9:52 PM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Those pesky negatives (revisited)
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> --------
>
> Nope; what I'm saying is that I see no evidence whatsoever that "I'm
> through" rather than "done" is AA(V)E. Sorry I even mentioned
> perfective 'done.'

Permit me to provide yet another anecdote. As the bus from UCLA got
closer to what used to be the middle-class 'hood where I lived, but is
now that part of L.A. known as "Korea Town," according to a map
provided by the NYT, black schoolkids got on the bus and went, as
schoolkids everywhere are, for some reason, wont to do, to the back of
the bus, Already in the back of the bus were some young white men who
had spent the day surfing. One of the black kids asked them, "What are
them boards y'all got?" One of the white guys answered, "These are
surfboards. Don't you guys surf?" Answering a question with a question,
the black kid asked, "Man, have you ever seen a blood surf?" "No."
"Well, if you do, kick his ass!"

So, the next time that you hear a blood say "I'm done," please kick his
ass for me.

>
> I'm very fond of the idea that somebody finds what I use as part of
> my professional vocabulary) a pomposity. It ain't a label I get often.

dInIs, please! It's just my opinion of the usage itself. I don't intend
to malign you personally as a pomposity. I have nothing against your
choosing to use it. Despite the Republicans' best efforts, it's still a
free country.;-)

-Wilson Gray

>
> dInIs
>
>
>
>> On Aug 11, 2004, at 5:24 PM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: Those pesky negatives (revisited)
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --
>>> --------
>>>
>>> I'm puzzled with Wilson's comments on 'done' and 'through.'
>>>
>>> I would be hard pressed to distinguish the grammaticality (not
>>> prescriptive status) of "Are you done?" versus "Are you through?" The
>>> claim that the latter is AAE (or AAVE) don't warsh with me atall.
>>> Perfective 'done' (I done finished) is, of course, widely shared in
>>> nonstandard varieties, white and black, but Wilson's assignment of
>>> 'through' (in this sense) to AA(V)E is puzzler to me. Perhaps there
>>> is some frequency factor involved, but I recall no references to it
>>> in the literature.
>>>
>>> dInIs
>>
>> We're not talking about the same phenomenon. I'm speaking of "done"
>> and
>> "through" in their use as synonyms for "finished" only. I remember an
>> old cop show in which the LAPD are dealing with a white man from the
>> Southern hill country. The man says, "I kilt my partner." The cops ask
>> him what he's talking about. He answers, "What I said. I *done*
>> [emphasis in the original] kilt 'im." I find nothing interesting in
>> this, despite the fact that it's a scripted, therefore completely
>> artificial, exchange. However, if I understand dInIs a-right, he
>> thinks
>> that I'm claiming that a Southern black man would have said, not "I
>> done kilt 'im," but "I through kilt 'im." Rather, what I'm claiming is
>> merely that a white person would say something like, "I'm done killing
>> him," whereas a black person would say something like, "I'm through
>> killing him" and that either would say something like "I done finished
>> killing him" or "I've finished killing him." I'm also stating as fact
>> that this particular usage of "through" was totally pervasive in the
>> social environment in which I grew up, whereas this same usage of
>> "done" simply did not occur. When I found myself in environments in
>> which the use of "done" was pervasive instead of that of "through," it
>> struck me as "ungrammatical." I therefore constructed at least two
>> incorrect theories to account for this phenomenon before I realized
>> the
>> truth of the matter: my way of using "through" is non-standard,
>> despite
>> the fact that the usage seems to be quite transparent. I've never
>> found
>> a single instance in which anyone has failed to grasp my meaning when
>> I've said "I'm through" instead of "I'm done."
>>
>> Though I realize that few here are likely to care, I find the phrase,
>> "African-American Vernacular English" to be an incredible pomposity
>> devoid of useful content. Back in the day when "Negro dialect" was the
>> standard term, a friend jokingly suggested that we rename our dialect
>> "Niggese" and be through with it. Works for me. Why not? Because Jesse
>> Jackson won't like it?
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> In general, I have no problem whatsoever with the splitting of
>>>> infinitives. I'm fairly certain that I was in high school before I
>>>> even
>>>> heard about the no-splitting-of-infinitives "rule." Also, in
>>>> general,
>>>> I
>>>> try to avoid the splitting of infinitives in writing, but *not*
>>>> because
>>>> I believe in the existence of some supposed "rule" against it. It's
>>>> merely a stylistic whim. However, this simply is not the case wrt
>>>> "to
>>>> _not_ VP." For me, it is a genuine rule of  grammar that "to not VP"
>>>> is
>>>> wrong. I didn't learn it through being taught it or by reading it in
>>>> some prescriptive "grammar." I learned it from the fact that it was
>>>> not
>>>> used by the people from whom I learned to speak.
>>>>
>>>> I have to admit that this is not the first time that I've found
>>>> myself
>>>> on the wrong side of the grammatical fence. I once believed that
>>>> only
>>>> the illiterate or the semi-literate used "done" instead of "through"
>>>> in
>>>> cases such as, "I'll be done with this posting in a few minutes"
>>>> "you
>>>> can't go out till you're done with your chores" "are you done with
>>>> that?"  "may I use that when you're done?" Then I realized that I
>>>> was
>>>> wrong. The truth was that only illiterate or semi-literate *white*
>>>> people used such forms. Finally, I realized that I was still wrong,
>>>> For
>>>> speakers of standard English, such use of "done" is perfectly
>>>> grammatical, used by speakers of all levels of education or social
>>>> standing or sophistication. Rather, it's the use of "through" in
>>>> cases
>>>> such as those above that is a grammatical peculiarity, a feature of
>>>> everyone's favorite non-standard dialect, Black English.
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps I should make it a point to remember a statement made by a
>>>> former classmate after she had challenged Morris Halle during a
>>>> lecture
>>>> on a point of phonological theory: "I don't know why I said that! I
>>>> know that I speak with an accent!"
>>>>
>>>> -Wilson Gray
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dennis R. Preston
>>> University Distinguished Professor
>>> Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
>>>         Asian and African Languages
>>> Wells Hall A-740
>>> Michigan State University
>>> East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
>>> Office: (517) 353-0740
>>> Fax: (517) 432-2736
>
>
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
> Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African
> Languages
> A-740 Wells Hall
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824
> Phone: (517) 432-3099
> Fax: (517) 432-2736
> preston at msu.edu
>