finna

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:19 PM -0400 9/8/04, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>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."
>
>"Fixing to" still looks like an expression of intentionality to me. "Fixing
>to rain" = "getting prepared to rain" AFAIK. I hear sometimes -- and say
>myself -- things like "It's planning to rain like crazy any minute" or
>"It's not raining yet but it's been thinking about it all morning".
>
The last one, though, is metaphorically interpreted, isn't it?  And
possibly your penultimate example too?  As I understand "fixin to",
any such intentionality has disappeared for many speakers (as noted
above), much as happened with "The thermometer failed to reach 80
degrees, despite the forecast" or "There failed to be a quorum",
where only expectation/likelihood is involved, not effort.  This is
certainly a common sort of semantic shift, although for different
speakers it will affect different words.  For me, "The sun managed to
break through the clouds" does not involve the same degree of
intentionality- or effort-attribution (and hence personification)
that "The sun succeeded in breaking through the clouds" does,
although in other (animate-subject) contexts "manage to V" and
"succeed in Ving" are pretty close to synonymous.   I'd imagine that
different speakers would draw the line at different places on these
(and in particular on "fixin to" in its various guises.

larry