finna

[Jonathan Lighter]

This whole complex of reduced and possibly morphologized forms of "fixing to" is new to me, and fascinating.  I have never heard it - much less seen it written - in East Tennessee. Which means precisely nothing.

I can still remember the weirdness I felt when I first noticed teens saying, "So I was like, 'What's going on?' and she was like, 'What's the matter?"   There were four of 'em sitting right across the aisle from me on a LIRR car in 1983 or '84.

More onstructively, I hope: Let's remember that "fixing to" itself began as expressing intentionality but has evolved into a simple future in at least some cases: "It's fixing to rain."

I have many colleagues who use getting ready to" in this way, and I don't know if it's particularly Southern: "It looks like it's getting ready to rain."

JL


Terry Irons <t.irons at MOREHEAD-ST.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Terry Irons
Subject: Re: finna
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the spring SECOL/LAVIS meeting, Mary Zeigler presented a compelling
analysis of finna entitled "'minna' and 'mfinna': Morphologizing BE
fixin to and BE goin to in Southern American English." Her central
claim is that finna and minna are the result of a process of
grammaticalization in which the original phrasal auxiliary, through a
series of phonological changes, is no longer a morphophonemic
alternation of the original phrase, but is a new morphological form,
which has acquired a new meaning. In this case, she argues that finna,
mfinna, and mo no longer carry simply temporal aspect but have developed
into quasi-modal forms that signal intentionality.



--
Virtually, Terry
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Terry Lynn Irons t.irons at morehead-st.edu
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Snail Mail: UPO 604 Morehead, KY 40351
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