Re: [ADS-L] Yo, Hav e You All Heard 'We All'?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

"We all" is the normal subject form. That is how the Beatles used it. That is
how everybody uses it. We all know how to use it that way. It is common to us
all. God wants us all to think that He's there for us. Etc.

Sometimes, when people are trying too hard to be "correct," they will use the
subject for where the object form would be normal and "correct." That is what
the lady did in the news story:

She said: [the congressman] "wants we all to think that he's there
for the people, but deep down inside, he doesn't care."

What one would normally say is, [the congressman] "wants us all to think that
he's there
for the people, but deep down inside, he doesn't care."

There is nothing particularly AAVE about this (as cats22's original posting
suggests).

The construction has nothing whatever to do with the Southern plural pronoun
"y'all" (which seems to be what cats22 was also suggesting).

There is nothing particularly remarkable at all about the lady's utterance,
except that it is a hypercorrection of a fairly common sort.

In a message dated 8/13/08 4:13:55 PM, cats22 at FRONTIERNET.NET writes:


> 'Sorry, Ron. I don't see any similarity (aside from the
> same two words being used) in the Beatles' example and
> mine. Unless maybe the yellow submarine was rent-subsidized.
> --
> An aside: Back when that song was only-recently off the
> pop charts, I had occasion to be flying to London from NY
> and a kid in the row in front of me sang that one line
> roughly 13,983,451 times while I and others were a captive
> audience. That he managed to survive to walk off the plane
> is something of a miracle.
> dh
>




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