Natural-Born Lover : Words

[Ron Southerland]

--On Sunday, August 29, 2004 12:14 AM -0400 Wilson Gray
<wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:

| The fact of the matter is that I'm saying that "get over," in and of
| itself, is an idiomatic usage, peculiar to BE, perhaps, that has the
| basic meaning, "succeed." Is it really possible, in any dialect of
| English, to delete the object of a preposition before any prior
| reference has been made to said object? If "get over" is a truncation
| of "get over [Some Nominal Phrase Object of the Preposition]." then
| there's no way for the hearer to recover that missing information. The
| words say only, "I done got over." There's simply no way to know what
| the singer has in mind. even if you had all the song's words at hand.
|
| However, if you accept the meaning of "get over," as "succeed," then
| what BE terms the "story" of the song is obvious: the singer has
| brought himself to pull the chain on a bad relationship, has
| successfully recovered from the emotional blowback [sorry!;-)] - no
| more crying, etc. - and, since he has put all that behind him, he is
| now ready to proclaim
| himself once again "a natural-born lover."
|
| FWIW, there's a song with the title, "I've Done Got Over," by Irma
| Thomas, who's best known as the writer of "Time Is On My Side," of
| which hers is the original recording. The former song opens with the
| line, "I've done got over [now, ah] you at last." It's clear that Ms.
| Thomas was inspired by Mr. Domino's work - farther along in the song,
| she sings of the price of loving the wrong man, obviously a reference
| to of Mr. Domino's much earlier work, "Oh, What A Price (I had to pay
| for loving you)." However, Ms. Thomas is singing of the pain of
| unrequited love and is using "get over" in its standard English meaning
| with its usual syntax. The "now" and the "ah" are just syllables thrown
| in to make the words match the rhythm of the music.
|
| -Wilson Gray

<...>

This whole thread, esp references to song lyrics, finally twigged me: I
recalled an old Mahalia Jackson LP (and now CD) containing a song
(spiritual) called 'How I got over'. Clearly with variations in the lyrics
such as 'make it over' and 'coming on over' the 'succeed' gloss seems to
work and there appears no underling (prepositional) object any more than
there is necessarily with 'get down' or 'get up'.

A sample of the lyrics below. Complete (and really long) set at
<http://www.lyricsxp.com/lyrics/h/how_i_got_over_mahalia_jackson.html>.


How I got over
How did I make it over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

How I made it over
Going on over all these years
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did I make it over

Tell Me how we got over "LORD"
Had a mighty hard time coming on over
You know my soul look back and wonder
How did we make it over


--
Ron Southerland
Gabriola Island