Natural-Born Lover : Words

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 27, 2004, at 4:18 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Natural-Born Lover : Words
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> --------
>
>>>> At 1:15 AM -0400 8/27/04, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>>> I've now listened and relistened to the words of Fats Domino's
>>>>> "Natural-Born Lover" and I hear only:
>>>>>
>>>>> "I done got over at last"
>>>>>
>>>>> and not
>>>>>
>>>>> "I done got over you"
>>>>>
>>>>> or any other possible reading.
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Maybe it's to be taken with "'you' understood", as with
>>>> imperatives...
>>>>
>>>> larry
>>>>
>> ...
>> Would you provide an example of what you mean from some other dialect
>> of English or from some other language, with more exposition? I must
>> be
>> unusually dense, or perhaps not experienced or educated enough, or
>> just
>> lacking the background to understand what to you is obvious. But it's
>> simply not clear to me what you mean. Your point totally escapes me,
>> though I'm sure - well, I hope that I'll be able to grasp it, if you
>> will provide a broader explication. I really need some help, here.
>> Will
>> you provide it?
>> TIA
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>
> I won't try speaking for Sam.  *My* point was semi-jocular, but I'm
> willing to elaborate.  When I was in grade school, they used to teach
> us that the subject of imperatives was "YOU understood".  This was
> later fleshed out by Postal and others in the early years of
> generative transformational grammar, when syntactic arguments based
> on the distribution of reflexives ("Shave
> {yourself/*myself/*himself/*themselves}") and tag questions ("Come
> in, won't {you/*she/*I/*they}") were invoked to support a "YOU" in
> underlying structure that was later deleted.  And no, I wasn't
> assuming that similar arguments could be marshaled to support a "YOU
> understood" as the object in the case of "I done got over ___ at
> last".  Sorry to have been so obscure, but it is Friday afternoon.
>
> larry
>

Oh. Geez, Larr, that was a cold shot. Your comment seemed so
straightforward and obvious that I thought that I couldn't possibly
have a correct understanding of your point. I guess that I still
haven't gotten over the trauma of reading - well, looking at the words
on the pages is probably closer to the truth - "Greek Grice," back in
the '70's. As a Greek friend of mine once put it, "It was all
mathematics to me."

Enjoy the weekend!

-Wilson