query about an isogloss (pos. "anymore") & a lexical gap

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:42 AM -0400 6/8/05, Alice Faber wrote:
>Laurence Horn wrote:
>>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.
>
>The Hudson Valley would count both as Upstate NY and positive anymore
>country. (Certainly, Columbia and Greene Counties would, and possibly
>neighboring counties like Duchess, Renselear (sp?) and Ulster, as well.)

Thanks, Alice; that would certainly explain it.  I don't know which
upstate NY county Russo grew up in, but it's interesting that after
going to school in upstate NY (Monroe County) and California, I had
never encountered it AFAIK before living in the midwest, in Michigan.
In four years in Wisconsin I heard it all the time.  The classic
dialectological treatments suggested to me that the U.S. heartland is
indeed the heartland of the relevant dialect area (see Thomas
Murray's 1993 article in _Heartland English_), but this may well be
changing.  Anyone know about Maine?  And if the usage was in fact
unconsciously transplanted there by Russo (from upstate NY, Illinois,
Arizona, and/or Pennsylvania), is there a label for that, parallel to
"anachronism" but referring to unintentionally superimposing one's
own regional dialect on that of one's characters?  It obviously
happens a lot when British authors set novels in the U.S. or vice
versa.  "Exoglossisms?"  (Don't everyone huzzah at once.)

Larry