"Is is"

[Jonathan Lighter]

So, Wilson, in a thousand years they'll know who was responsible....

JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: "Is is"
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On Aug 2, 2004, at 7:58 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: "Is is"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Brian Kilmeade, anchor on "Fox & Friends," 2 Aug 04:
>
> "Isn't the good news is we've really got 'em now?"
>
> Slip of the tongue? Or a new syntactic twist on the "double is"?
>
> BTW, I discussed "double-is" with my intro to linguistics class in
> November 2003, and none of the twenty-plus students were (consciously)
> familiar with the construction.
>
> JL

A linguist friend of mine, to whom I will be forever grateful - even
though he refuses to believe that "CaribBEan" was ever the preferred
pronunciation of "Caribbean" - pointed out to me that, in certain
constructions, I was using a triple "is," e.g. "What the situation is
is [lowered pitch+pause], is that I'm using a triple 'is' without
realizing it."

-Wilson Gray

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