Invariant innit, isn ´t it

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 7, 2006, at 10:35 AM, Matthew Gordon wrote:

> We discussed this on ADS-L in Sept. of 2003:
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0309b&L=ads-
> l&D=0&H=1#36
> The discussion started under the subject line "Mamet".

the mamet and similar american (non-indian) examples in this thread
were, i think, all of casual speech variants of "isn't it?" (and
"don't it?", which i won't go into here), as doug wilson suggested
back then.  that is, "innit?"  was used in the very same contexts as
the question tag "isn't it?".  that's not a fixed tag, like the
british examples we've just been talking about, but a reduced variant
of a variable tag, with its phonology represented by special
spellings.  i don't think you get anything like "You're goin',
innit?" in mamet.

> In that discussion someone included an observation I wanted to make
> here
> which is that I associate 'innit' in the US with American Indian
> speech
> thanks in part to Sherman Alexie.

does anyone know how "innit" is used in alexie's works? we can't
really tell anything just from the observation that his characters
use "innit"; there are several possible systems here.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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