query about an isogloss (pos. "anymore")

[Laurence Horn]

>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

Hmmm... But wouldn't Carbondale host a bevy of students from
[Northern-or- Mid-]Southern Illinois who would have fronted?

L

>
>>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
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