"yeah, yeah" again (another version)

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 21, 2012, at 2:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Where's the Yiddish inflection in "Yeah, yeah"?
>
> JL

It's got to be added, as something you bring to the party.  I assume it would be something like 'sarcastic, New-Yorky, know-it-all-heard-it-all'.  Imagine Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, or one of their comic ancestors (or descendants, if that's different).   Still easier to imagine than Morgenbesser actually saying "Yeah, yeah" in Yiddish.


LH
>
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: "yeah, yeah" again (another version)
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Jul 21, 2012, at 12:25 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>>> Garson O'Toole wrote, quoting from an MIT Press book:
>>>> the philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, shout from the back of the room
>>>> in rich Yiddish: "Yeah, yeah?"
>>>
>>> What is the rich Yiddish?  I want to employ it when appropriate, with
>>> varying intonations as appropriate.
>>>
>> Well, in the possible (but not actual world) in which Chomsky spoke at
>> some (possible but not actual) talk about double negation at Columbia
>> (extremely unlikely), Morgenbesser's putative comeback was, I think,
>> supposed to be in rich Yiddish-inflected English rather than Yiddish, but
>> youneverknow.  I'm not sure what the Yinglish is for "Yeah, yeah"; maybe it
>> just comes out in the inflection and the eyebrows.  Probably similar to the
>> rich Yiddish-inflected Danish that Morgenbesser used when Otto Jespersen
>> was talking about double negation at a public lecture sometime in the 1930s.
>>
>> LH
>>
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