'sup?

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Yes, I suspect it's very difficult to tell when an allegro or
>shortened pronunciation takes on a life of its own so that ti would
>be entered in a slang dictionary. But surely there are items (not
>processes) where an item could be called slang on purely
>phonological grounds (e.g., the elongated vowel in "Sheeeeeeeeeit").
>Slang phonoogy anyone?

dInIs





>I first noticed  /tsup/~/sup/ in NYC about 1970.  When I came to
>Tennessee in 1974, it was used there as well, almost entirely by
>young African Americans, as in NY.
>
>I didn't create a file on it because it seemed so obviously a
>colloquial pronunciation of the equally colloquial "What's up?"
>
>It's current popularity and adoption by teenagers generally, comes,
>I suspect, through rap lyrics.  Am still not sure it should be
>called "slang," but if so it certainly didn't start out that way.
>
>JL
>
>
>
>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Laurence Horn
>Subject: 'sup?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>For a student's query, and in the absence of an HDAS Volume 3, I'm
>trying to track down some background on "'sup?" as an encliticized
>truncation of "What's up?" Anything on the history of both when and
>by whom would be welcome.
>
>Larry
>
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