more eye dialect

[Frank Abate]

What Mark mentions brings to mind:

lemme
gimme (which gave us the stand-alone noun used in golf)
oughta
wanna

These and others are common in email, as with other informal spellings, usages, and avoidance of caps.

Frank Abate

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Mark Odegard
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 2:15 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: dialect in novels


>there is a child character in it who uses "gonna" and "gotta" a lot.  I did
>this (I thought), not to denigrate the child, particularly, but to bring
>home to the reader that the child is nine or ten years old. In this case,
>I'm not sure it would be denigrating, since children grow up.  But I
>wouldn't use "eye dialect" for much of anything else.
>Anne G

In speech, 'gonna' and 'gotta' are lexically distinct from 'going to' and
'got to'. These spellings, while unofficial, reflect actual usage, and in
the case of 'gotta', is disambiguative.

I'm gonna go to London = I intend to go to London
I'm going to London = I am travelling to London

I gotta go to London = I must go to London (modal auxiliary)
I got to go to London = I had an opportunity to go to London

'Usta', as in 'used to' vs. 'usta' is not quite as fully established.

A box he usta store stuff in (formerly and no longer: modal)
A box he used to store stuff in



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Frank Abate

Dictionary & Reference Specialists (DRS)
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