transitive "be done" (again?)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Aug 20 18:00:17 UTC 2012


To respond to a student's query, I'm trying to recall a thread from a discussion I seem to vaguely remember our having a while back.  It concerned transitive "be done", if that's the right label.  An example is "I'm done my homework", with the meaning essentially that of mainstream "I'm done with my homework".  The questions are:

1) what is the geographical range of this construction?
2) what are the grammatical/semantic constraints on when it occurs?
3) what papers have described it (maybe something in _American Speech_?)
4) what if anything is it called?

Answering (4) might help answer some of the others.  I looked carefully (I think) through the DARE entries for "do" and "done" without finding it described, although I may have missed it.  The student writes:

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This usage seems to be common in Baltimore, Philadelphia, parts of New Jersey and Delaware, and also Quebec. I would be happy to give more specific examples, although I am not aware of scholarly articles on the subject. Here is a link to a blogger who discusses it. http://shubhabala.com/archives/1310
I have noticed it among my friends from these regions and have also been documenting its use.
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Thanks for any help!

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



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