Query for Southern(er)s, Southrons, or...

[Laurence Horn]

Re my:

(1)  *She fed her some chitlins.

(2)a.  *She gave her a big raise.   (vs. pandialectally OK:  She gave
herself a big raise.)
     b.  She got her a big raise.

(3)a.  *I caught me a cold.   [or maybe OK if I was trying to catch a cold?]
     b.  I caught me a catfish.

(4)a.  He shot him two squirrels.
     b.  *He (got drunk and) shot him two coonhounds (by mistake).

(5)a.  He got him a case of beer.
     b.  *He got him a case of the clap.


At 12:49 PM -0500 12/19/01, Ellen Johnson wrote:
>I guess that's me...
>
>I think you may be onto something here.  In general, I agree with the
>judgments, however, 1 and 2a are much less acceptable to me than 3a, 4b,
>and 5b.

Great; the prediction would be that the former two are out on
grammatical grounds, while the latter ones are out pragmatically.

>The verb seems to be the culprit, i.e. 1b "She ate her some
>chitlins" would be fine, even for someone for whom eating chitlins is
>not particularly indicative of good fortune.

well, in this case, it would be successful fulfillment of an
intention rather than necessarily good fortune.  The paraphrase for
non-Southern speakers might be "managed to..."  The difference
between "feed" and "eat" would be that "feed" must have an (indirect)
object (*I fed some chitlins), and the "me" here doesn't count as an
object.

and
At 11:57 AM -0600 12/19/01, Donald M Lance wrote:
>All these starred items could (as you imply in 3a) be possible if surrounded
>by verbal context that would set them up as 'her' being equivalent to
>'herself'.  Even so, the result is irony, particularly in 5b.  The syntactic
>violation marks the irony even without suprasegmental or kinesic signaling.
>The culture would call for deadpan kinesics for irony anyway.
>
Right.  Again, "manage to" would work the same way:  "He managed to
get a case of the clap (to fall down the stairs, to get himself
shot,...)" implies that he was trying to do so.

Thanks to both of you for the help.

larry