second-person pronouns redux

[Dennis R. Preston]

Ah bet it ain't 'nem,' Ah bet it's 'nim,' just like mine.

Don't go round cusin us South Midlands and Southern speakers of failing to
conflate I-eh before nasals.

This reduction is not uniquely AAVE.

dInIs

>In Southern African-American communities, I often hear, "nem,"  an even
>further reduction of "and them."  My guess is that the process was the
>following:
>"and them" > an' 'em > nem.  For example, a speaker might at some point have
>uttered the following:  "Kathy and them left town."  Later, the utterance was
>reduced to "Kathy an' 'em left town."  Now, it has become "Kathy 'nem left
>town,"  the pattern which I hear almost all of the time.   PAT


Dennis R. Preston
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