Those pesky negatives (revisited)

[Dennis R. Preston]

I'm puzzled with Wilson's comments on 'done' and 'through.'

I would be hard pressed to distinguish the grammaticality (not
prescriptive status) of "Are you done?" versus "Are you through?" The
claim that the latter is AAE (or AAVE) don't warsh with me atall.
Perfective 'done' (I done finished) is, of course, widely shared in
nonstandard varieties, white and black, but Wilson's assignment of
'through' (in this sense) to AA(V)E is puzzler to me. Perhaps there
is some frequency factor involved, but I recall no references to it
in the literature.

dInIs



>
>In general, I have no problem whatsoever with the splitting of
>infinitives. I'm fairly certain that I was in high school before I even
>heard about the no-splitting-of-infinitives "rule." Also, in general, I
>try to avoid the splitting of infinitives in writing, but *not* because
>I believe in the existence of some supposed "rule" against it. It's
>merely a stylistic whim. However, this simply is not the case wrt  "to
>_not_ VP." For me, it is a genuine rule of  grammar that "to not VP" is
>wrong. I didn't learn it through being taught it or by reading it in
>some prescriptive "grammar." I learned it from the fact that it was not
>used by the people from whom I learned to speak.
>
>I have to admit that this is not the first time that I've found myself
>on the wrong side of the grammatical fence. I once believed that only
>the illiterate or the semi-literate used "done" instead of "through" in
>cases such as, "I'll be done with this posting in a few minutes" "you
>can't go out till you're done with your chores" "are you done with
>that?"  "may I use that when you're done?" Then I realized that I was
>wrong. The truth was that only illiterate or semi-literate *white*
>people used such forms. Finally, I realized that I was still wrong, For
>speakers of standard English, such use of "done" is perfectly
>grammatical, used by speakers of all levels of education or social
>standing or sophistication. Rather, it's the use of "through" in cases
>such as those above that is a grammatical peculiarity, a feature of
>everyone's favorite non-standard dialect, Black English.
>
>Perhaps I should make it a point to remember a statement made by a
>former classmate after she had challenged Morris Halle during a lecture
>on a point of phonological theory: "I don't know why I said that! I
>know that I speak with an accent!"
>
>-Wilson Gray


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736