Gone and V-ed

[Salikoko Mufwene]

Can anybody paraphrase the following construction:

       But he's gone and drowned his dinner in syrup.

It occurs in Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in the following context:

    Atticus shook his head at me again. "But he's gone and drowned his dinner
in syrup," I protested. "He's poured it all over --"

A southern student in my "Dialect Voices in Literature" class suggested that
"gone and" is equivalent to PERFECT "done" in this construction. However,
another southern student said she was not familiar with it. My
African-American
student had no clue either. The rest of white American students in the class
had no idea. Can anybody on this list enlighten us?

Sali.


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Salikoko S. Mufwene                        s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                      773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html
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