"package store"

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 03:53 PM 9/1/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>>Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu
>>
>>When two different terms exist in the same area for the same thing (both
>>"package store" and "liquor store" are quite famililar in NY and CT),
>
>Hey, be careful how you use "NY"!  In west-central NY state, you
>don't hear 'package store' at all (unless from outsiders).

Right, NYS is most of a day's drive across, even at 65 mph, and there are
probably few generalizations one can make about usage in NYS that actually
correspond precisely with the state's borders. Having spent some time in
western NYS, my impression is that it is more like the Midwest than the
Atlantic Coast, which from the geography is just what one might expect. Many
"pan-NYS" linguistic usages would have to be trivial, e.g., the definite
article is used throughout the state....

I was simply assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that everyone reading the post
would clearly understand from my email address among other things that I was
writing from NYC and that when I wrote "NY and CT" I was referring to my
experience with speakers in and around the metro NYC area. Was that not
clear to everyone? If not, sorry!


>People have complained that 'package store' can't be a regionalism
>since it's found way outside of New England.  That just means it's a
>regionalism in a bunch of regions, because it doesn't have currency
>in  many of the places in between MI, MS, and MA.

This raises a possibly interesting methodological question. Naturally,
"package store" will tend to appear entirely or almost entirely in some
portion of the localities where the law requires that alcoholic beverages be
sold in closed packages. Those laws vary from locality to locality. Such
localities seem to be dotted around the country. Is there really such a
thing as polka-dot regionalism, by which I mean not a few puddles of usage
-- that's common enough -- but rather, given the local variation in laws,
maybe hundreds of such puddles that are for some reason to be construed as
isolated puddles of regional usage rather a single fairly widespread usage
that applies wherever the state of the law creates the thing to which the
word applies, in the absence of which there is of course no need for
currency or usage? In any event, it seems clear that "package store is
simply a CT/NE regionalism (and, by implication, no knowledgeable person
would try to make anything more of it)" is not a completely satisfactory
explanation.

Which means of course that your "generational" speculation is worth looking
into. Usage is almost always the result of an aggregation of factors and is
therefore somewhat more complicated than the first convenient generalization
that springs to mind.




Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu