till

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 10:38 AM 10/1/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Larry Horn inscripsit:
>
> >>>>>
>At 9:49 AM -0400 9/28/01, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
> >>"The yard needs mowed yo" is my favorite example sentence of the
> >>year.
> >
> >My yard needs big mojo indeed.
>      [...]
>
>Oops, never mind that last posting of mine.  I should have checked
>all my messages before responding, especially those from Doug W. or
>Mark M., at least one of whom I should have counted on to have
>pre-empted me.
><<<<<
>
>Well, I might've but I didn't, not on this topic, which I didn't see till
>today. I was right in there on "my your", which -- at least in the digest
>-- was intertwined with "yo"; which might be the cause of this your
>confusion. ;-)\  ... Now, *that* double determiner has a Shakespearean ring
>to it.
>
>                   Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist
>  Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company : speech recognition
>  320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com

But isn't your example really a topic + comment construction?  i.e., "this,
your confusion" in writing?

Another question though, prompted by your spelling of "till":  I used this
form in a recent article submission on dialect variation, in the expression
"a quarter till eight," for example.  The editor insists on changing it to
"til" or "'til" (so far she hasn't added the apostrophe, but I suspect she
will).  I see "till" all the time in our field, esp. with ref. to the time
expression, which has become a frozen frame, it seems to me.  Does anyone
not agree with me on this??

_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm