LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.18 (01) [EN]

Sun Nov 18 14:25:49 UTC 2012

=====================================================
 L O W L A N D S - L - 18 November 2012 - Volume 01
lowlands.list at gmail.com - http://lowlands-l.net/
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Archive: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
=====================================================

From: Pat Barrett pbarrett at cox.net
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.17 (01) [EN]

My family on my mom’s side were from West Virginia and they never said
“y’all”; it was something they thought of as Southern and they joked about
it. I vaguely recall some people saying  something like “you’uns” but I
interpreted it as “young uns”, or maybe “young ones” IS what I was hearing.
I’m not sure and no one from that side is left to ask.
Pat Barrett

----------

From: Mike Morgan mwmbombay at gmail.com
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.17 (01) [EN]

David wrote, regarding the "proper" 2nd person plural pronoun:

> If we
> were to have a standard form of the language, wouldn't "you'uns" and the
> delightful "us'uns" be preferred?

well,  depends on HOW one decides on the Standard form? Do we go with
most geographically widespread? used by the largest numbe rof
speakers? form from the most prestigious dialect? But where exactly is
that in the Appalchians? I am pretty sure every self respecting
Southerner (or Applachian) feels HIS'N (or HER'N) dialect is the best
;-)

As the last volume of the Dictionary of American Regionalisms is now
finally out (earlier this year), perhaps wwoudl be interestign to see
what it says... although here in Kathmandu, I don't have access to a
copy ;-)

Here's an article on the dictionary completion (which mentions, but
does not solve the you all vs y'all vs you'uns vs yunz vs youse vs you
guys question)

http://www.thestate.com/2012/02/26/2167570/dictionary-of-american-regional.html#.UKjYJ4ZLwlI

A bit more dated, but here is what it says in Raymond Hickey's chapter
in Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker's Diachronic Perspectives
on Adress Term Systems (p 357)

"In the section on Scotch-Irish grammatical features, Montgomery notes
"The pronoun you'uns 'you' (plural) ... as in 'you'uns make yourselves
at home', was found by Kurath 'in the folk speech in Pennsylvania west
of the Susquehanna, in large parts of West Virginia, and in the
westernmost parts of Virginia and North Carolina' (Kurath 19549:67)

from:
http://books.google.com.np/books?id=4zocJp7ZCJ0C&pg=PA357&lpg=PA357&dq=y%27all+us%27uns+you%27uns&source=bl&ots=cXjoR0m_Q9&sig=DqWCwd83G0hkBvIrUqrr-X_7NNw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P9eoUOaTMIO6iQf7p4DADg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=y%27all%20us%27uns%20you%27uns&f=false

Says "large parts of W Virginia", but not how large or which ones.

> This book is based on the West Virginia Appalachian
> dialect. Perhaps, that is different from the East Tennessee and Western
> North Carolina dialects I am familiar with.

I am not exactly the best judge in that I grew up all over the lower
49 (and so readily accept ALL 2nd plural pronouns as okay.,.. and
might would even use half of them myself given a chance!). My exposure
was only when we visited each summer growing up (though I did live in
peripheral areas for a couple pre-teen years: 11 months in the Florida
Panhandle and 15 months in Fayetteville NC, albeit on an army base).

My father, though, is from West Virginia (Davy, WV, a small coal
mining town -- got it's picture in Life magazine back in the 60s for
the "World's longest flowerbox"), but doesn't really have -- to my ear
-- a Southern or Apallachian dialect AT ALL. My mother, on the other
hand, is from Ferrum, Virginia (near Rocky Mount, though NOT the Rocky
Mount of Andy Griffith fame.. that was Rocky Mt, NC), and she clearly
has retained her dialect throughout her life whereever we lived (and
she continues to maintain it, though that is easy as they retired to
Stedman, a village outside Fayetteville NC). Can't say if my dad uses
a plural form and if he does which one (I am relying on memory), but
my mom definitely does: and it is y'all.

Y'all have a nice day now, y'hear!

mwm || *U*C> || mike || माईक || мика || マイク (aka Dr Michael W Morgan)
sign language linguist / linguistic typologist
academic adviser, Nepal Sign Language Training and Research
NDFN, Kathmandu, Nepal

----------

From: Mike Morgan mwmbombay at gmail.com
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.17 (01) [EN]

An' I reckon y'all might enjoy readin' this here article from West
Virginia History magazine on the dialect:

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh30-2.html

(though nothing I saw regarding the you'uns vs y'all controversy)

mwm || *U*C> || mike || माईक || мика || マイク (aka Dr Michael W Morgan)
sign language linguist / linguistic typologist
academic adviser, Nepal Sign Language Training and Research
NDFN, Kathmandu, Nepal

----------

From: Sandy Fleming sandy at scotstext.org
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2012.11.17 (01) [EN]

> From: David B Alexander <dbalexander2 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Subject: Vocabulary
>
> I just received a copy of Alice's Adventures in Appalachian Wonderland.
> Looking to the vocabulary I noticed it uses the contraction y'all for you
> all rather then you'uns. There is no entry for us'uns although there is an
> entry for young'uns. This book is based on the West Virginia Appalachian
> dialect. Perhaps, that is different from the East Tennessee and Western
> North Carolina dialects I am familiar with. (Appalachian was probably
> distinct enough at one time to be a language, but lacked the political
> standing needed.)
>
> In Arkansas, where I now live, I have been surprised to hear longtime
> residents using "you'uns" instead of "y'all." Most Arkansans, even in the
> highland areas, say, "y'all."
>
> My question: Isn't "y'all" a more recent borrowing into Appalachian? If we
> were to have a standard form of the language, wouldn't "you'uns" and the
> delightful "us'uns" be preferred?
> Or is my experience just too limited?
>

I haven't started reading this book yet, but would like to discuss the idea
of what a standard language is, especially with respect to the current
situation in Scots. Not that the subject hasn't been done to death in the
past; but my ideas have changed since then, so it needs doing to death
again.

The situation with Scots is that nobody agrees on how it should be written.
There are groups that agree vaguely, but even within these groups, an
agreement that would produce a standard form of the language isn't
forthcoming. Indeed, it's very rare for a writer in Scots to even agree
with himself (women writers not excluded!), and the only way I can achieve
self-consistency without an external standard is by concordancing on a
computer.

I haven't actually explained what I would consider to be a standard form of
a language. Maybe I could give a few examples to start.

Like Catalan, a standard form of the language would make it possible to
publish regular newspapers in the language that everyone's happy to read.

Like Finnish, it would be a form that people can write consistently even if
nobody actually speaks it.

Like English, any variations would be generally understood and not
significant enough to be worth worrying about (eg colour vs color: I know
some people moan about this, but that's nationalism rather than
linguistics; there can't really be a rational basis for making a fuss over
a very limited number of insignificant differences that are agreed on
throughout a wide publishing domain and recognisable outside that domain).

With Scots, a lot of people, especially academics, think that Scots
shouldn't be written in anything but dialectical form, possibly with some
creatively fantastic forms thrown in.

But there are also those who believe that Scots will never thrive unless a
standard form is laid down and accepted. Unfortunately, their actions tend
to contradict their beliefs: they'll accept taking words they don't know
from dictionaries and learning to use them to strengthen the language, but
they draw the line at allowing words, or even just variant pronunciations,
to creep into what they see as standard language. Put briefly, they're
happy to use new forms in their writing, as long as it's only augmenting
their own dialect, not contradicting it.

I think there comes a point where if a language is to survive against media
onslaught and natural erosion, it's necessary to go fundamentalist on the
idea of a standard form of the language, and for someone (lexicographers?
publishers? government? - whatever works) to say that "you have to spell
this word this way or you're not writing Scots, but a dialect of Scots".

But Scots writers and academics, even the ones who want a standard language
and imagine they're supporting the idea, seem much more attached to their
own dialects, sometimes only certain aspects of their own dialects, than to
any concrete idea of a standard language where they'd have to spell the way
they're told. Is it worth dropping all your own notions about how Scots
should be written, in order to ensure a future for Scots? Few seem to think
so!

In the Victorian revival of Scots, it was normal for Doric writers to write
"wha" rather than "fa", and "no" rather than "nae". They went along with
the accepted practice in other dialects. This would be less likely now, and
the opposite idea, of basing standard Scots on Doric pronunciation, would
seem almost impossible to implement.

To me, this means that Scots, whether you think of it as a language or a
set of dialects, will eventually die out. For a language to reach full
maturity, its speakers have to stop thinking of it as their baby.
Especially if, as with Scots speakers, that means choking it to death
rather than letting it play with the horrible children across the street.

It seems ever more likely that Scotland will gain independence in the next
few years. I don't think this means anything in terms of the survival of
the language, although it might put standardisation higher on the political
agenda, which could be helpful. Nationalists tend to use the language as a
political tool, however, some even making out that they speak it even when
it's obvious that they don't. There seems no reason to believe they'd
continue the charade once they'd achieved their political ends.

I think that the most likely scenario is that Scots will go the way of
Cornish. Once nobody speaks it any more, there will be a generation who
want it back and are willing to learn it, but aren't emotionally attached
to specific dialects. I'm thinking Scots would then fare even better than
Cornish, considering the large amount of material the neoScots would have
to work with, including a large corpus of literature and several
dictionaries, two of them very large and scholastic.

Of course, the Scots they devise as a standard for themselves wouldn't be
like the Scots we know, and would be pooh-poohed (or rather "[a:xt]-ed")
away by Scots speakers of the present time, but then so would any standard
anybody might create for us now.

Sandy Fleming...
...who spent a considerable amount of time in a shop yesterday trying to
figure out what other shop the woman was directing me to (it turns out that
by "Afeena" she meant "Athena") and now fears for the future of English too
:)
http://scotstext.org/

=========================================================
Send posting submissions to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands.list at gmail.com
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html .
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498
==========================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20121118/c520fa16/attachment.htm>