y'all redux

[Wilson Gray]

Inny y'all ever watch Dr. Phil? He's a fine example of a Southwestern
speaker. He's from Vinita, OK (not to be cofused with Vinita, MO),
originally, but he's lived in Texas for quite a while and uses a lot of
"y'all." He even uses "hit" for "it"! And there's also Katie Couric. I
can't say that I've ever heard her use y'all, but she uses "you-all"
with a fairly high degree of regularity. She's a native of (West?)
Virginia, I believe.

-Wilson


On Feb 25, 2005, at 12:22 AM, James C Stalker wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: y'all redux
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> I stand corrected.  In thinking about the data problem, Mike
> Montgomery's
> article in Am Speech on multiple modals comes to mind.  He has a
> relatively
> limited range of data, all painstakingly collected from reported data
> over
> quite a span of time, but the data make a convincing case for mms being
> polite forms. Following on from there, mm speakers will also be non--mm
> speakers, when the politeness needs are not relevant.  Sg/pl yall, if
> sg is
> polite, would follow the same pattern, making the collection of data
> more
> complex.  No one would ever be a consistent sg or pl yall person.  They
> would always be both, but in different contexts.  Could this be a
> Northern/Southern shiboleth?
>
> Jim Stalker
>
> James C. Stalker
> Department of English
> Michigan State University
>