YOU ALL is not Y'ALL

[Mark A. Mandel]

Dennis Baron scripsit:

        >>>
The first time I noticed it was in scripted speech--a 1940s John Wayne
western (I forget which one, maybe "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon") where
Wayne, playing a soldier, says to some group of people, "Thank all you
for [I don't remember now what he thanked them for]"

What would have sounded normal to my ear would be "Thank you all [for
coming, for whatever}" or even "I'd like to thank all of you for ...."
But that's not what the man said. The reason I remember it is that the
very next day I heard a lecture by Charles Fillmore in which he
insisted that "thank all you" could not occur in English. He didn't
appreciate my counterexample. People don't say it much if at all today,
but was it ever common?
        <<<

I can imagine that's arising from the construction "all you <plural noun
phrase>", e.g., "all you good folks", perhaps by the speaker's starting
with the intention to include a noun phrase and changing his mind, or
getting distracted, midstream.


-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania