"Y'all redux"

[sagehen]

I wonder if "y'all" addressed to an individual may not sometimes simply be
a kind of formal, shy politesse, functioning rather like the tu/vous
distinction in French. A way of not being too pointed or familiar with
another person.  I think, in particular, of a store clerk in southwestern
Ohio (whose accent would probably be familiar to dInIs) who routinely said
to individual customers: "Y'all come back, now, y'hear?"
In any case, unless a dogmatic definition of "southern" as /not using
"y'all" except as a plural/, it is absurd to go on saying "no true
southerner ever, &c.", when there have been numerous attestations of such
usage in this and previous discussions of "y'all."
Just the two-cents' worth of a bystander who has never lived south of the
34th parallel.
A. Murie

A&M Murie
N. Bangor NY
sagehen at westelcom.com