Sweaters

[Amy Speed]

Come to think of it, I had a friend in college who referred to sweaters as
"sweatshirts." I remember it used to drive me crazy. He grew up mostly in OK
and TX, though his parents are from CA. I don't know if that has anything to
do with it, though. And I'm in agreement with the female responses so far
... a jumper is a dress worn over a shirt.

Amy

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Aaron E. Drews
Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 2:30 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Sweaters


Hello All,

I've enclosed a picture of an item of clothing.  What I'm wondering is:
would anybody call this item of clothing a sweatshirt?  If you don't call it
a sweatshirt, do you think younger people do, or your colleagues and peers?

The reason I ask is because I'm noticing quite a few people calling this a
sweatshirt in my data, where I would expect either sweater or jumper.  What
I want to know is if "sweatshirt" is a legitimate variant in any variety of
American English, or if my subjects are finding a way of avoiding having to
say either sweater or jumper, or if my subjects just plain can't tell the
difference from this picture.

Thanks for any help!

Aaron


________________________________________________________________________
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron      Departments of English Language and
aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                    Theoretical & Applied Linguistics

 "MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
  --Death