Query re ANYMORE

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:55 PM -0400 4/13/01, Drew Danielson wrote:
>"Anymore" in an affirmative sense as "again" or "nowadays" is cited in
>at least two news/feature articles on Pittsburgh speech culled from
>local publications.  George Swetnam, "Pittsburgh Patois", Pittsburgh
>Press, 9-Sep-1959, p. 4 of Sunday Family insert, uses "You're getting
>fat, any more" as an example (he compares it to the use of the word
>"schon" in German).
>
>Si Bloom, "Every One Talks Funny But Us", The Pittsburgher, v.1, n.3,
>Aug. 1977 also comments on the positive use of anymore as a feature of
>local speech (as opposed to the interrogative and negative usage in
>"accent-battered New York City").
>
>A more scholarly citation:  Youmans, Gilbert, "Any More on Anymore?:
>Evidence from a Missouri Dialect Survey", American Speech, 1986, 61, 1,
>spring, 61-75 discusses the the positive and negative uses of "anymore"
>in data collected from Missouri college students' speech.

Yes, but note that the use of "anymore" to which Michael Montgomery
adverts below is NOT the "positive anymore".   These are all negative
(or, more accurately, downward entailing) contexts, in which other
negative polarity items (ever, any) are acceptable.  What is odd
about them, if anything, is (as he notes) the aspectual nature of the
contexts, the fact that "anymore" is being used as an NPI version of
"again" rather than of "still".  For positive "anymore" in general,
see the ads-l archives; we've discussed this at some length
intermittently over the last decade or so.

larry

>Michael Montgomery wrote:
>>
>>  Dear ADS-Listers:
>>
>>  Is anyone familiar with _anymore_ as used in the sentences below?
>>  This might seem to be the garden variety of the adverbial since
>>  it apparently occurs only in negative contexts, but the sense
>>  here ("again, from now or then on") is one that does not appear
>>  in the OED or DARE (or any of several other dictionaries I have
>>  consulted).  Part of what is unusual is the type of verb in
>>  these (i.e. punctual) in these sentences, which are from the
>>  speech of the Smoky Mountains of TN/NC.  I'd be grateful for any
>>  comments or other attestations.  Perhaps there's a good lexico-
>>  graphic reason why they are not to be found in dictionaries,
>>  but I do not seee it.  They're perfectly idiomatic to me.
>>
>>  Michael Montgomery
>>  U of South Carolina
>>
>>  He never remarried anymore.
>>
>>  I said "Leery, if you say that anymore to this horse, I'll jump
>>  on you."
>>
>>  He never did come back to the fox hunt any more.
>>
>>  I didn't live here anymore after that until about twenty-one
>>  years ago.
>>
>>  There was very little whiskey made back in there anymore.
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