y'all redux

[Beverly Flanigan]

Do Dr. Phil and Katie Couric use y'all/you all in the pl. or sing. or
both?  OK and (west?) TX, and WV (but probably not VA) might represent
"fuzzy boundary" usage of sing. y'all (and even you all?)--in either the
geographical sense I mentioned earlier or the politeness sense suggested by
Jim.

At 01:22 AM 2/25/2005, you wrote:
>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