Re: Re: F**king-A

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Well, of course part of what I "heard" was the way I was parsing it at the 
time. As I said before, from age 15 or 16 on I just assumed that the syllabic 
/n/ was an article, not a participial marker. Since no one ever used a velar 
here, why should I think any different? I'm still mystified as to why every 
lexicographical source--and most of the people in this discussion--feel the 
/n/ HAS TO be a remnant of {-ing}. FUCKING is used as an intensifier in 
exclamations (as in "These guys have been talking about the phrase 'Fuck-n-A 
for days? Fucking unreal!"), but not in any set phrases that I can think of. 
On the other hand, there are lots of sete phrases of the form 
Verb+Article+Noun (e.g., "Eat a big one!").

I hope it is clear that I am not saying that the parsing with FUCK is 
"wrong"--there is no way that we can expect to construct some sort of 
definitive etymology here--as Connie Eble reminds us in her book, when it 
comes to slang, multiple etymologies are often the right scientific 
conclusion, since the ONLY reality that some slang phrases have are the ones 
that are invented by hearers. 

Even so, while the parsing as an intensifier would have made sense to me; the 
alternative derivation from a deleted ARE (as Mark suggests) couldn't have 
worked at all. We were not prone to AUX deletion in eastern iowa in 1956, and 
AAVE would have been of marginal influence on my adolescent speech--there 
were only five or so African Americans in the whole school, and they were not 
very prone to heavy AUX-be deletion. Eastern Iowa in 1956 was also quite 
r-ful, so there wouldn't even have been much opportunity for phonological 
deletion of ARE, either. 

It makes no difference to this argument, but Mark puts a comma in "You 
fuckin' A, John!" As I explained in my earlier post, this was not the 
pronunciation that we used. There was no pause at all between the "A "and the 
"John."

   


In a message dated 1/16/03 7:59:53 PM, mam at THEWORLD.COM writes:


> On Wed, 15 Jan 2003 RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
> 
> #Thinking about it a little more, I remember that the FULL phrase was "You
> #fuck an A John!" meaning 'totally right, I agree."
> 
> I assume that you are remembering from hearing, not reading, the
> expression. Could that have been "You fuckin' A, John!"? That is,
> - "fuckin'" rather than the homophonous "fuck an"
> - copula deletion from, or as in, AAVE
>         ?
> 
> -- Mark A. Mandel
>