A new one on me y'all guys

[Jonathan Lighter]

A handful of occurrences of "ya'll" in Faulkner (or anybody else) would, of
course, mean nothing more than poor proofing.

I don't but the idea that it's from "ya (all)" because the orthography
would inevitably suggest an / a / instead of an  / O /. I think it's comes
chiefly from  being confused (maybe via a touch of dyslexia) with the
grammatically unrelated "I'll,"  "you'll,"  (and even "ye'll") etc.

JL



On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: A new one on me y'all guys
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Oct 3, 2012, at 11:53 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>
> > On 10/3/12 11:47 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> >> On Oct 3, 2012, at 8:04 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 10/3/12 11:00 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> >>
> >>>> On Oct 3, 2012, at 6:44 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Never have I heard "y'all guys."
> >>>>
> >>>> [AZ] following up on Alice Faber ... (with Alice saying it was new
> for her).
> >>>
> >>> [AF] I was so startled by it, it didn't even occur to me to google.
> >>
> >>>> [AZ] it would in fact be astonishing if the variant didn't occur with
> some frequency, given the frequency of vernacular 2pl "you guys"
> (especially in vocatives) and the use of y'all for 2pl in the South etc.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> [AF] It "felt" like a token-for-token replacement for "youse" in "youse
> >>> guys", but that's my NY area bias talking (misleading me?)
> >>
> >> more neutrally: "y'all guys" plays the same role for some Southerners
> (etc.) as "youse guys" does for NYers (etc.) -- and as "yinz guys" does for
> Picksboigers.
> >>
> >
> > And that says something--I'm not sure what--about the lexical status of
> > "guy" and "guys" as some kind of pro-forms.
> >
> One argument for the pro-formal (?) nature of "guy" is the existence of
> contexts in which singular "guy" (as opposed to the more easygoing plural)
> can be sex-neutral--just in case it serves as a kind of place-holder, more
> or less like "one". From my collection:
>
> (1) —Your first mistake was telling him [= an abusive caller] your name.
>       —Yeah, but there were only two of us on the phones, and they would
> have figured it was me because I’m a girl and the other guy is a guy.
>
> (2)  from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (the 1992 movie):  Merrick (Donald
> Sutherland) tells Buffy (Kristy Swanson) that she is “The Chosen One” who
> must fulfill her vampire-killing destiny.  But she’s not really into her
> mission and it falls to Pike (Luke Perry) to remind her of her true calling.
>             Pike:          But you’re the guy! The chosen guy!
>             Buffy:       I am the chosen one, and I choose to go shopping.
>
> (3)  I like sex just as much as the next guy.
>  —Kate Austen on “Chicago Hope”
>
> LH
>
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