Jo Mama

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jun 3 02:51:25 UTC 2011


On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 9:42 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> <waiting for the other shoe to drop>

You'll be waiting a while.

Heard on the tube, spoken by a white guy:

"If you're going to look for them, _you'll be searching a while_. I'll
help you."


That struck me as having essentially the same semantic content as the
BE string. A clear difference is that, in BE, the sentential stress
falls heavily on the _while_:

"You'll be searching a WHILE!"

The white speaker said merely,

"You'll be *searching* a while."

Nevertheless, there seemed to be an implicatton of great, possibly
unsuccessful effort, especially since the speaker states that he's
going to help in the search.

--
-Wilson
-----
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.
-Mark Twain

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



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