y'all redux

[Majors, Tivoli]

I'm from Dallas so I thought I'd weigh in on the whole y'all thing. We used to argue about this in grad school at UT all the time. Generally, it was yankees who would say they heard y'all used in the singular. Us Texans would vehemently deny the possibiility. What I think may be going on is that when we southerners use y'all, it always has a plural intention, but may not seem to to outsiders. So if someone were to say to me "Did y'all enjoy that movie?" I would understand that to be addressed to me, anyone who saw the movie with me, and even anyone loosely affiliated with me. My assumption would not be that they meant me myself alone. In fact, I'd say that meaning is not allowable in my dialect. I can't speak for others, of course, but we Texans were generally in agreement on this point. None of us was from West Texas, but Ft. Worth is just a stone's throw from Dallas, so I'm still a little dubious.