Bogoyvalenskiy, D

[Beverly Flanigan]

The adverbial use of "good" in the States may have begun as a dialect
variant, but it is now simply idiomatic in certain phrases:  "You did
good," and after "How are you?" "I'm good, how are you?"  But hasn't the
same change occurred with German "gut"?  Isn't "wohl" reserved mainly for
idioms like "Leb wohl"?  Such regularization is not unusual; adverbial -ly
is also falling away in many dialects:  "Go slow," "Do you say this different?"


At 01:46 PM 8/14/01 +0200, you wrote:
>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


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm