"you pays your money"

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Margaret is not using the term "ungrammatical" as linguists normally use it. She is making a distinction without a real difference. Every construction that people regularly use (ie, that is not merely a mistake) has "grammatical structure." A linguist would simply say that any construction is ungrammatical with respect to any system that does not allow ("generate") it.

------Original Message------
From: Margaret Lee
Sender: American Dialect Society
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
ReplyTo: American Dialect Society
Sent: Aug 16, 2007 8:27 AM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "you pays your money"

I would call the form grammatically incorrect (according to the rules of Standard English) rather than ungrammatical. It does have a grammatical structure which makes the meaning of the sentence clear.

  Margaret Lee

Scot LaFaive <spiderrmonkey at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
  While watching a Twilight Zone episode today I was struck by Rod Serling's
use of an ungrammatical form: "you pays your money, you takes your chances."


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