y'all redux

[Jonathan Lighter]

The blog comments are indeed interesting.  Let me join Alice in recommending them to your attention.

"All y'all" is emphatic and to be distinguished from "some of y'all" rather than "you."

JL

Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Alice Faber
Organization: Haskins Laboratories
Subject: Re: y'all redux
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> Then how explain the occasional Southerner who admits to occasional singularity?
>
> Most people, one assumes, don't often monitor their own speech for absolute semantic precision. Whatever the observable facts of "singularity," the *average* Southern speaker, I believe, is far more likely to admit the possibility of occasional singularity than are sophisticated Southerners with an interest in language.
>
> Just another damyankee hypothesis.
>

The comments on that blog entry I pointed to yesterday were mostly about
"y'all", singular or plural. I think those posters would count as
literate, self-aware non-linguists. While some commenters were as
insistent as any ADS-Ler that singular "y'all" is an unattested
monstrosity, there were other reasonable-sounding reports of unambiguous
singular "y'all".

(For those who didn't follow the link, the blog is
, and the comments would have been to
yesterday's entry.

--

Alice Faber

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