the curious grammar of Ohio

[Beverly Flanigan]

And, to add to the California mention:  CA is of course a "mixed" state,
with residents from everywhere; but the test is to find long-time residents
who, while not native, have presumably "nativized."  I mentioned my aunt
and uncle on the thread a couple years ago, but I'll recap:  Brother and
sister, born in Minnesota, now 84 and 76, she moved to CA in the 1940s and
he in  the '60s.  Neither has lived anywhere else but in MN and
CA.  Minnesota has no positive "anymore" (or at least it didn't in their
generation and mine), so they didn't get it at home.  Yet a few years ago
when I visited them, I heard each use it spontaneously (and not in each
other's presence).  I was quite surprised, but it's clear they picked it up
out there.  Both are WC/LMC, one living in San Diego and the other in L.A.

On position in the sentence, I don't recall what they said, but Tom Murray
has suggested a frequency-of-use hierarchy for initial, medial, and final
position, which I can't recall offhand.  One colleague from northern
Indiana (64 now) and another from Akron (also 64--God, we're all on the
edge of retirement!) both use "anymore" sentence-initially, both positive
and negative (I think).  But southern Ohio doesn't have it (except maybe
somewhat in final position); it's a North Midland and West Midland thing.

At 02:13 PM 10/28/2004, you wrote:
>Peter A. McGraw  writes:
>
> >California?  Wow!
> >
> >There was a discussion of positive "anymore" on this list a long time ago,
> >but actually I wonder if that terminology captures what's distinctive about
> >the usage.  I think I picked up positive "anymore" in college in Ohio.
> >I've used it comfortably ever since, and I don't feel particularly
> >outlandish using it here in the Northwest.  What I never picked up, and
> >what still sounds regional to me, is sentence-initial "anymore," whether
> >positive or negative.   Neither "Anymore, I always use positive 'anymore,'"
> >nor "Anymore, I never use positive 'anymore'" seems natural to me, but I
> >think both would be natural to speakers in the "homeland" of this usage.
> >
> >Peter
> >
> >--On Wednesday, October 27, 2004 5:04 PM -0400 Beverly Flanigan
> ><flanigan at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:
> >
> >> Good one!  I have yet to see positive "anymore" in fiction (it's not
> >> Appalachian but is common in Midland Ohio and westward, all the way to
> >> California now, I believe), but if the novel is really set in Ohio, I may
> >> see it.  Two of my OU colleagues use it frequently.
> >>
> >> At 04:35 PM 10/27/2004, you wrote:
> >>> Anymore, I often wonder about that curious Ohio grammar, too.
> >>>
> >>> Peter Mc.
>  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>I was startled by the use of positive "anymore" when I first heard it in
>1947  in Washington state (Olympic peninsula).  I had never encountered it
>among the people I grew up with in eastern Nebraska and the Chicago North
>Shore.  It sounded very odd to me.  I even twitted my older brother a
>couple of years ago, when I found him using it, with having  gone native
>after living for the past 40-50 years in Portland and other places in the
>northwest.
>Now I think it may have migrated with the shifts in population during and
>after WWII to the northwest......?
>A. Murie