<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
On 5/29/2010 2:47 PM, E. Bashir wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:857172.57481.qm@web45704.mail.sp1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Given all this, it looks like we have a semantic development in this dialect such that behind (spatial) > behind (temporal) > causal connection.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I agree that it's a causal connection, but I'm guessing that it
developed out of the "responsibility" sense, not out of a temporal
sense. If it already existed in a temporal sense, we should find
things like "coincidentally, he went to jail for another
offense behind that stickup," but we don't - yet.<br>
<br>
On 5/29/2010 2:09 PM, Marc FRYD wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4C01585A.5030901@univ-poitiers.Fr" type="cite">
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
Thanks indeed to you all! And point taken about the syntactic status...<br>
Re the 'behind' (preposition!) use in that particular example, is it
standard English usage? I ask, because I am not at all familiar with it
in British English.<br>
I now understand 'behind' to mean something like 'because' (thanks to
JC Khalifa, Linda Bawcome, E.Bashir). <br>
My initial reaction of excitement was frustrated because I thought it
looked like a case of an elusive aspectual perfective periphrasis which
I've only found mentioned once in Visser (1973: 2211) who quoted the
following: "E's behind telling tu Mr. Baker" (1892 Sarah Hewett, <i>Peasant
Speech
of Devon</i>, 21). Visser has this meaning the same as the
perfective "after -ing" periphrasis of Irish English. Having lived a
number of years in Devon, I must say that I never had the good fortune
to come across any other occurrence of this particular turn of phrase...</blockquote>
<br>
This seems to be an independent, but parallel, development from
that. It's definitely not standard English, and I don't remember
hearing it before. But from the places we've seen it attested (The
Wire, Oprah, Michael Vick, "Lajeep" on Urbandictionary), it seems to be
centered in African American English. Not the New York dialect, and
probably not Chicago, but Mid-Atlantic, and possibly other regions.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:grvsmth@panix.com">grvsmth@panix.com</a>
</pre>
</body>
</html>