Personal dative

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:53 AM -0400 7/16/01, Douglas Bigham wrote:
>  >>I'm gonna hire me  a wino to decorate our home.
>So you'll feel more at ease, dear, and you won't have to roam.<<
>
>FYI: It probably doesn't matter but. . . There is no "me" in the actual song.
>
Thanks for the bad news--it does matter to me.   I obviously *wanted*
to remember the song (by David Frizzell, Lefty's younger brother)
with the PD, but as you say (and as a quick google check confirms),
it weren't there.  Oh well, there goes one of my favorite examples.
Anyone know any other country songs with a PD?

I don't suppose I could convince anyone that Dinah Washington used to sing

Well, you can cry me a river
Cry me a river
I cried me a river over you

?  Unlike the redecoration ballad, the PD would ruin the meter here.
But there's a newer song by Sarah McLachlan that asks the musical
question "If I cried me a river of all my confessions would I drown
in my shallow regret?"

larry

P.S.  As it happens, I'm not alone in misremembering the
wino-decoration line with a PD, as google reveals.  That don't make
it right, though--just a bug on the windshield of life.