FW: Guys for Girls Redux

[Peter A. McGraw]

Something's missing from this discussion so far, though.  The fact that
"Dude!" is attested elsewhere as an all-purpose interjection doesn't
preclude that the usage cited in the original post was actually an
expansion of the vocative use by deletion of the +male feature.  It seems
to me one would need a recording to be sure, because the intonation pattern
would indicate fairly clearly which was meant.

Try saying, "Dude!  You're pregnant!" (= Wow!  Are you ever pregnant!).
Then try: "Dude, you're pregnant!" (= You, lady, are pregnant.)
See if your intonation pattern doesn't distinguish the two.

Peter Mc.

--On Tuesday, May 13, 2003 10:52 AM -0700 FRITZ JUENGLING
<juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:

> I just told my class this anecdote and asked if 'dude' struck them as
> being odd.  No one was bothered and they all said it was some
> interjection.  So, dude has expanded its meaning for them. Fritz
>
>>>> laurence.horn at YALE.EDU 05/13/03 09:05AM >>>
> At 11:38 AM -0400 5/13/03, Frank Abate wrote:
>> RE what Larry H says (cc'd below) in reply to Katy M:
>>
>> I think this _dude_ is a sort of super-vocative, and does not refer to
>> any person specifically, but is simply a marker of surprise.
>
> Sort of like
> "Boy/Man, are you pregnant!"?
>
> L
>
>> So in that context
>> it would be non-gender referential . . . or might we call it generic?
>>
>> I have heard my teen and slightly beyond-teen kids and their friends say
>> this for years, and it seems an utterance of surprise, not directed to
>> any person.
>>
>> Frank Abate
>>
>>
>> At 10:10 AM -0400 5/13/03, Kathleen E. Miller wrote:
>>> Hello All,
>>>
>>> A few months ago we had a discussion about calling a group of girls,
>> "guys."
>>>
>>> The other day, on our way through a rather seedy part of town (RFK's
>>> not in the greatest location) a woman came up to the car and asked for
>>> money, saying she was hungry and pregnant. (She was, obviously so). She
>>> then noticed a male friend [mid-30's Maryland native] smoking, and
>>> changed from asking for money, to asking for a cigarette.
>>>
>>> My friend replied, "DUDE, you're pregnant!"
>>>
>>> I made a [admittedly cursory] search of the archives and didn't notice
>>> this being discussed. And I don't know whether if I've behind the times
>>> and the entire world knows that it's morphed into non-gender specific
>>> use, or my friend's the only one to use it that way, but I had never
>>> heard it in such a context before.
>>>
>> Interesting.  I'd bet, like "guys" in the early days, that this is
>> more likely in the vocative (where the intended reference is easily
>> recoverable) than in purely referential contexts (#That was one
>> pregnant dude there!)
>>
>> I know there's at least a limited use of "dudette", but perhaps only
>> jocularly and only in the primed context ("dudes and dudettes").
>>
>> Larry



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************