the curious grammar of Ohio

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Nov 4, 2004, at 7:51 AM, i wrote:

> ... well, i've now read the book, and blaustein's praise of its
> regional
> specificity is much more puzzling than before...

> i found only *four* features that might be described as truly regional,
> and each occurs only *once* in the book (ok, i might have missed an
> occurrence, but these features are really really thin on the ground):
>        "dern" for "darn" (what *is* its regional distribution?)

DARE has "durn" (variants "dern", "dirn") as chiefly Sth, S Midl (but
with only three spots in (southern) ohio -- many more in west virginia,
kentucky, etc.).

>        "sack" 'bag'...

further notes on banner's book: the characters are distinguished by
their speech, some having many more colloquial or working-class
variants than others.

banner is *extremely* sparing with spelling "-in'" for an alveolar
variant of "-ing" and with auxiliary reduction spellings, though
presumably his characters would use these pronunciations very
frequently.

arnold