whenever

[Joan Houston Hall]

DARE's evidence shows the use of "whenever" in contexts such as the
following to be common in the South and South Midland:

Whenever his Daddy died, he took over the farm.

That must have been whenever Jerry was a baby.

Whenever I was a gal, folks kep' ther' clo'es on, an' th' men-folks allus
wore th' britches.

Whenever we was there last night, I asked him.

He gave me a good supper last night when ever I came within his doors.



At 08:38 AM 10/7/1999 -0400, you wrote:
>Ron,
>
>Of course you can't say "Whenever I was a little boy..." (at last not in
>the straightforward reading; if there was a time when you chose to be a
>little boy [e.g., act like one], this reading is possible).
>
>This means that the accused are not substituting "whenever" for "when," but
>that others have conflated an aspectual distinction made by the two forms.
>
>"when" = at/during a bounded time
>        When Mary arrrived.... (she arrived at a certain time)
>        When I was a child.... (at any time during this time period)
>
>"whenever" = at/during "alternative" times
>        Whenever Mary arrived (she arrived more than once or at an
unspecified
>                time)
>
>In fact, one could argue that "when" conflates "when" and "while," the
>latter being more appropriate for the "When I was a child....." since
>durativity rather than punctuality is at work.
>
>Since other features (verb marking, context, etc...) also mark these
>aspectual distinctions, it is clear why we can dump them all into "when."
>Varieties with "whenever and "while" simply keep more distinctions on the
>adverb clasue marker.
>
>Of course, I don't have a clue about the regional/social distribution of
>these matters.
>
>dInIs
>
>>In a message dated 10/6/1999 5:35:49 PM, ronnieg at STARGATE.NET writes:
>>
>><< "Whenever" is used as "when" in the south, but more so by the older
>>
>>generation, I believe.  Children do hear this usage from their grandparents
>>
>>and 'learn' repeat it that way until someone tells them differently. >>
>>
>>EVERWHEN is an alternative form of WHENEVER (e.g., "You can come to my house
>>everwhen you want"); I'm a little less sure about WHENEVER for WHEN, though.
>>Could you give us an example? Would one of the old folks say, e.g.,
"Whenever
>>I was I little boy, we didn't have indoor plumbing"?
>
>Dennis R. Preston
>Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics and Languages
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
>preston at pilot.msu.edu
>Office: (517)353-0740
>Fax: (517)432-2736
>