Nobel Prize for Archaeological Grammar

[Wilson Gray]

On 8/21/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Nobel Prize for Archaeological Grammar
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>
> On Aug 21, 2007, at 6:11 AM, Laurence Urdang wrote:
>
> > Heard today on WOR710, 0505, by Shelley Strickler:
> >                                   dived
> >   for "dove":
> >   "I scuba-dived in Cancun."
>
> certainly non-standard.  an interesting case, because it illustrates
> one of the three ways in which non-standard morphological variants
> can differ from standard ones:
>
> non-standard continues older irregular variant, standard has
> regularized (dialect "kine", standard "cows")
>
> standard continues older irregular variant, non-standard has
> regularized (standard "sought", non-standard "seeked")

OMG! TMI, arnold! When I heard "seeked" for the first time, yesterday,
I actually thought that it was a hapax that not even the speaker would
ever use again. Well, cut my legs and call me "Shorty"!

-Wilson

> standard continues older regular variant, non-standard has innovated
> by analogy with other forms (standard "dived", non-standard "dove",
> by analogy with "drive"/"drove" etc.)
>
> >   I wonder if I shall ever again hear "me" instead of "I" in
> > contexts like, "He sent it to I and my brother" (let alone the
> > inherent rudeness of mentioning oneself before another or others,
> > clearly a relic in the annals of politeness).
>
> an extensive treatment by Thomas Grano, with good bibliography up to
> 2006:
>
>    http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~zwicky/Grano.finalthesis.pdf
>
> two things:
>
> first, the order with 1sg object "I" second is *vastly* more frequent
> than the other order.
>
> second, your impression that you hear nothing but nominative
> coordinate object pronouns is an attention effect (sometimes caled
> the Frequency Illusion): you probably notice almost all the
> occurrences of this type that go by, and disregard all the others.
> when researchers actually sit down and sift through all the examples
> in some corpus, the frequency of the nominatives is surprisingly
> small.  and mostly in informal contexts and/or speech.  there are a
> fair number of speakers who use the nominatives only in informal
> contexts and/or speech but use the standard system in formal writing;
> i have several distinguished colleagues who seem to follow this
> scheme.  (and there are other systems: see below.)
>
> (note: most people who have the nominative versions also have the
> accusative versions.  that is, the phenomenon is variable, and, as
> always, we can ask who uses which variants on what occasions for what
> persions.)
>
>
> >   I can tolerate anything as a professional linguist; but as a
> > professional writer who tries to cleave to an elevated style, I
> > abhor such linguistic miscegenations.
>
> the history of the phenomenon is interesting and complex; its
> outlines can be found in several places, including MWDEU.  but see
> especially: Philipp S. Angermeyer & John Victor Singler.  2003.  The
> case for politeness: Pronoun variation in co-ordinate NPs in object
> position in English.  LVC 15.171-209.
>
> in any case, the variant is old, going back in written texts at least
> to shakespeare, and no doubt in spoken materials before that.  in the
> early years, the nominative forms seem to have been emphatic.  the
> OED's published materials have a gap in cites for a while (they have
> slips for this period, and you can now find examples in corpora
> during this apparent dead period).  in any case, the nominatives re-
> appear with some frequency in the 19th century, and soon thereafter
> critics began complaining about them.
>
> many of these examples look emphatic; eventually the nominatives
> became associated, for some speakers, with formality and
> seriousness.  it's now very easy to find such speakers -- who will
> tell you that the accusatives are ok in speech, but the nominatives
> are "correct" in serious writing.
>
> no doubt there was some effect from hypercorrection, from teachers
> trying to eliminate *accusative* coordinate *subject* pronouns ("Me
> and him went"), and, perversely, that would promote the understanding
> that the nominative objects were formal, serious, and indeed correct.
>
> the short story is that a fair number of speakers now have a
> nominative variant for coordinate objects.  think of it as a special
> construction for pronoun case in coordination (if you like, you can
> think of the nominatives here serving as a "coordinate/comitative
> case"), usable in certain contexts.  yes, it's non-standard, but it's
> not just mixing things up.
>
> arnold
>
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