Hello from a newbie

[Beverly Flanigan]

I've been working on the first construction for a couple of years now, and
you're absolutely right--it's spreading like crazy.  I think we have a
thread on this in the archives too--anyone?  (And it's not off topic at all!)

At 03:03 PM 4/17/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi everyone - I just joined the List yesterday hoping as an amateur to
>keep up better with what official dialectologists are thinking and
>saying!
>The things I've noticed lately - admittedly off topic; forgive me! -
>include an epidemic of speakers saying "The point is is that ...." or
>even "The problem was is that...", and the EMT's heard on my local
>police scanner saying, "Transporting one non-emergent."  The latter may
>be regional - I am near Mississippi State University, but the former, I
>hear mostly on the radio from all over.
>Another thing that has intrigued me for years is that occasionally on a
>TV cop or detective show someone will say "I consulted a linguist at the
>University and he said that caller has a West Texas accent."
>Similarly, in a book, a woman was identified by consultation with a
>linguist as being Native American because a specific pronunciation
>feature indicated a bilingual childhood environment, etc.  I'm just
>wonderng if the writers of these TV shows and books really have existing
>"linguists" in mind, and, if so, how they know which linguist at which
>university to consult, since dialectology is often very specialized.
>In any case, the use of "you guys" has definitely filtered down to my
>part of the country, mostly age-group specific as you might imagine.
>
>Jim