the curious grammar of Ohio

[Beverly Flanigan]

Thanks for the Lawrence cite, Larry!  I recall being told by an Irish
linguist once that positive anymore isn't used in Ireland, but Michael
Montgomery said it is.  This suggests it's used more widely in the British
Isles.  I'll check Hughes and Trudgill too.

At 04:42 PM 10/28/2004, you wrote:
>At 8:55 AM -0700 10/28/04, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>>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.
>
>Sentence-initial "anymore" is never a negative (polarity) usage,
>since it's not within the scope of negation.  Of course it's possible
>to get "Not anymore it isn't" (with negative concord), but then the
>"anymore" is not initial.
>
>>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.
>
>If you think of "anymore" as being basically like "nowadays" with a
>slightly different time-frame (covering the range of what would have
>to be "nowanhours" as well as "nowadays", as when a poker player at
>an all-night game might complain "I was getting really good hands in
>the first couple of hours of the game, but anymore they've been
>garbage"), the initial occurrence isn't surprising.  Also, as we've
>discussed here in the past, not all cases of "anymore" without an
>overt negative trigger involve positive "anymore", e.g. "It's hard to
>find a good [whatever] around here anymore", where "hard" (for
>non-pos-anymore speakers) can't be replaced by "easy".  Similarly for
>"All he does anymore is lie on the couch, drink beer and watch
>football" or "Only masochists root for the Mets anymore": these are
>well-behaved negative-polarity licensing environments and thus not
>diagnostic for pos. anymore.   On the other hand, when Birkin, a D.
>H. Lawrence character in _Women in Love_, acknowledges "Suffering
>bores me any more", that's positive "anymore" (Midlands, not
>Midwestern variety).
>
>
>larry