Prescriptive Linguists

[Wilson Gray]

I wasn't arguing, merely describing. And, as usual, I'm describing an
incident that occurred long, long ago, in 1961 - there's been a lot of
water over the bridge and under the dam since those yoredays - and the
reaction of an upper-middle-class (the fellow-GI was the son of the
president of Shell Oil Company), Northern, white man to the speech of
the kind of Southern white man that he (and I) would have described as
a "hill-billy." In as much as such sentence-structures are also the
norm in Black English, a dialect of Southern origin, I found his
reaction to be rather extreme. But, then, I feel the same way when "to
not" intrudes itself upon my consciousness. I just don't get it, I
don't like it, and it annoys me, despite the fact that, surely,
millions of other native speakers of English use it and find nothing
strange in it. Nevertheless, it's an enormous pet peeve of mine.

-Wilson

On 1/30/08, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Prescriptive Linguists
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hold on there. "Get you a tray" is a whole different ball o' wax. "Get
> yourself a tray" might be somewhat more used, but probably not a lot. "I'm
> gonna get me a beer", "He's gonna get him a woman". Different argument
> altogether.
> DAD
>
>
> Well, it does kinda, sorta depend upon what you're accustomed to
> hearing. When I was in the the Army, a fellow GI, a white native of
> Darien, Connecticut, and a Stanford dropout, was flabbergasted to hear
> a white, Southern cook tell him to "git you a tray." He couldn't
> believe that such a sentence could be spoken by any native speaker of
> English. "'Get you a tray'?! 'Get you a tray'?! What the fuck kind of
> English is that?!"
>
> It sounds fine to me. I wonder what he would have thought of the black
> DJ who commented, "I'm jus' sittin' heah, eatin' own me a hamboiguh"
> or the blues line, "I laid down las' night, thankin' about me a mojo
> hane," abstracting away from the phonetics, of course.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 1/30/08, Michael H Covarrubias <mcovarru at purdue.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Michael H Covarrubias <mcovarru at PURDUE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Prescriptive Linguists
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> >
> > Quoting "David A. Daniel":
> >
> > > ...If said descendants were Portuguese/Brazilian we would get a lot
> > > of "I go to the cinema with the my friend Carlos," or "The your mother
> is
> > > you calling," or "Where is the my car new?" (Italian too). Just because
> a
> > > seemingly fluent speaker says something doesn't make it correct even
> > > acceptable, or even understandable, among those who do not share the
> same
> > > multi-linguistic background/knowledge.
> > > DAD
> > >
> >
> > A "multi-linguistic background/knowledge" isn't necessary for these
> structures
> > to occur or be understood, if I understand correctly that you mean
> > proficiency/competence/familiarity or even just more than passing exposure
> to
> > more than one language.
> >
> > While in my example another language provided an analogy that made the
> > ditransitive use of "saw" understandable in the sentence "he's the one
> that saw
> > you your hands" I could also have taken an analogy from  English itself:
> for
> > example a sentence like "He's the one that wrote you the letter."
> >
> > Are you saying that it's only because of language contact that such a
> structure
> > exists? Or are you saying that it's only because of contact that the
> > acceptability of ditransitive use creeps onto other verbs?
> >
> > michael
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org