YOU ALL is not Y'ALL

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

YOU ALL as an emphatic form of YOU is quite common outside the South. At 
least that is my intuition as a native speaker of Iowan. It is common to say 
things like "I want you all to eat your spinach" or even "I want you all three to 
eat your spinach." Likewise, "I want to thank you all four for being here 
tonight." True, "I want you all to eat your spinach" is odd when addressed to two 
people, as is "I want you all two to eat your spinach"; but only because 
English normally requires BOTH in the dual; ALL means 'three or more'. 

If someone who regularly uses the phrase "I want to thank you all three for 
being here tonight" as the way of closing a broadcast interview, it would not 
be surprising for that person to say mistakenly, "I want to thank you all two 
for being here tonight." But even if such a speaker idiosyncratically decides 
that "all two" is a satisfactory equivalent for "both" in this environment, an 
explanation based on the normal acceptability of "all" followed by a number 
greater than "2"; this is such a plausible explanation, it seems to me, that any 
putative connection with Southern "y'all" seems to me highly unlikely.


In a message dated 1/25/04 9:29:22 PM, stalker at MSU.EDU writes:


> My email system is failing, or bailing.  I did not get Matt's message, so 
> I'm
> glad Beverly included it.  The observation is interesting, but raises the
> question of why it is his style.  Given that "you all" is plural, why does 
> he
> adopt the style of specifying the number of speakers? Is it also possible
> that he is (hyper)correcting, knowing that "yall" is perceived as Southren
> (not a typo), therefore he is hypercorrecting to "you all" from "yall"?
> 
> Jim Stalker
>