query about an isogloss (pos. "anymore")

[Dennis R. Preston]

Southern Southern Illinois (the bottom 1/4 to 1/3) is too Southern to
be in the heart of positive anymore land, especially the fronted
examples.

dInIs

>We've discussed the (apparently growing) range of positive "anymore"
>on the list in the past, and it's clear that we're not just in Kansas
>anymore, or even the midwest more generally.  (There is, for example,
>the evidence of Joe Benigno, WFAN sports radio host and echt New
>Yorker, that I've cited on the list.)  But one place I *don't*
>associate it with is insular small towns in Maine, and I was thus
>struck by a couple of occurrences of fronted (and hence non-polarity)
>"anymore" in Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic novel
>_Empire Falls_ set in the (fictional) town of that name.
>
>Here are two examples, transcribed more or less accurately from the
>audiotape of the book:
>
>"She put the three cushions down on seats only a third of the way up
>the bleachers because anymore her feet always hurt from standing all
>day."
>
>"Anymore, all he wanted to do was jack off to the porn he downloaded
>off the internet"
>
>I see that (according to his bio for his 2004 Colby College honorary
>degree) while Russo grew up in upstate NY (also not what I think of
>as true "anymore" country--at least Rochester certainly wasn't in the
>1960s) he got his PhD at Arizona State and has taught at Penn State
>and Southern Illinois (the last of which is definitely in the heart
>of positive "anymore"-land, while the first two may be at least
>partly in the zone) before coming to Colby (Waterville, Maine) in
>1991.  Could it be that Russo absorbed the construction as a ruralism
>somewhere along the way, possibly in Carbondale (but maybe earlier in
>Tempe), and unconsciously put it in the mouths of characters who have
>never been out of Maine?  (Actually, as the two passages make clear,
>the "anymore"s in question are not actually *uttered* by the
>characters in question but associated with them in style indirect
>libre; at least in this novel, Russo--while not using a narrator as
>such--presents most scenes from the point of view of a particular
>character.)  Or am I wrong about Maine? I'm pretty sure not one of
>Stephen King's Maine-bound locals, whatever their Down East
>colloquialisms, have ever let a positive "anymore" past their lips,
>or I'd have noticed.
>
>Larry


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736