Bogoyvalenskiy, D

[Thora Tenbrink]

At 18:06 13.08.2001 +0100, you wrote:
>Don't Americans say "I did good" - I hear them say in response to
>"how are you"  = "Good" and it is creeping into British english too,
>replacing "well".  I've heard anecodatlly bestest, betterest amd
>gooder but never goodest..
>Annette
>

Thank you for this -- I never heard that. This might make it more plausible
that those using "I did better" are somehow aware of the relationship to "I
did good".
Of course, understanding "well" really well involves understanding the
relationship of the adverb to the adjective. Could it be that the
increasing usage of the adjective rather than the adverb is due to a
certain uneasiness with this irregularity? Maybe, for speakers, "well" is
somehow too remote from "good" to be used with the same ease (in contexts
where something "good" is to be expressed), so they increasingly prefer
"good"?! (I'm not too familiar with the mechanisms of language change --
I'm just speculating!)
- Thora



http://www.spatial-cognition.de


---------------------------------------------

Thora Tenbrink		
Spatial Cognition Priority Program & WSV
Universitaet Hamburg
FB Informatik
Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30
D-22527 Hamburg

Tel.: +49/*40/42883-2382
Fax:  +49/*40/42883-2385
e-mail: tenbrink at informatik.uni-hamburg.de
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WSV/hp/tenbrink-english.htm