A little more on y'all redux

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I don't think anyone disagrees with the following (correct me, please, if I 
am wrong):

1. The form "y'all" is overwhelmingly used in the plural in American English, 
when it is used at all.
2. The form "y'all" is sometimes used in frozen expressions (e.g., "Y'all 
come back") to address single persons.
3. Some Southerners will tell you, when asked, "Y'all can be used in the 
singular."
4. People sometimes make slips of the tongue when speaking.
5. Most published articles on the subject in scholarly journals seek to 
demonstrate that "y'all" is overwhelmingly used in the plural, i.e., most scholars 
who have seriously studied the subject--enough actually to publish articles on 
the topic--agree.
6. One article, by Guy Bailey et al., based on telephone surveys in Texas (or 
was it Oklahoma?) presents some evidence that, under direct question, a 
healthy minority of respondents agreed with the proposition that "Y'all can be used 
in the singular." The article has been criticized for its methodology, but it 
certainly supports the anecdotal evidence represented by (3) above.

To this I would add (wondering if there is any disagrement from any quarter):

1. "Y'all" pretty clearly started as a plural, parallel to "yuhnz" (< "you" + 
"ones"), "yuhz" (< "you" + "{Plural Suffix}"), and "you guys."
2. There is little if any linguistic reason (psychological or social) for 
speakers to use "y'all" as a singular, since "you" already exists and "y'all" is 
rather transparently plural given its morphology. Thus one would not EXPECT 
"y'all" to be used as a singular, except maybe in dialect mixture, by outsiders 
trying to sound like insiders.

I myself don't know of any "Southern academics and intellectuals" for whom 
putative singular "y'all" is a "hot-button issue"--or any "sophisticated 
Southerners" who issue "striking, dogmatic refusal[s]" and "deny categorically that 
it can or does" exist. It does seem to be a "hot-button issue" for 
wuxxmupp2000, who sounds right angry in the message below, apparently because people on 
the listserve have taken issue with various specific pieces of data that have 
been asserted seeking to demonstrate specific instances of singular "y'all."

Of course singlular "y'all" "exists." It "exists" in frozen expressions. It 
"exists" in slips of the tongue. It exists in the minds of some Yankees trying 
to speak Southern. It exists, if only as an artifact of how one asks the 
question, in Guy Bailey's study. Most importantly, it clearly exists as a 
grammatical possiblity in the minds of some speakers of American English, as some of 
the writers on this list-serve have demonstrated (just as there are other 
Southerners, generally a majority, for whom it does not exist as a grammatically 
possiblity). It may even exist as a very minor subset of all the unselfconscious 
utterances of "y'all" that are generated in America on a given day by bone 
fide adult nonsenile nonpathological Southern speakers (though why they would do 
so seems a historical and linguistic mystery). 

A serious linguist will ask, "How frequent is this form? Under what 
circumstances is it actually used? What is the historical and psychological and social 
function of such a form?" A serious linguist will not simply rant against 
against the "academics and intellectuals" who, for reasons that are not clear to 
anyone, including the ranter ("I find it amazing and symptomatic - of what I'm 
not certain"), do not see the issues the way he does.
> 
> 
In a message dated 2/24/05 9:51:49 AM, wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM writes:


> Jim, you misunderstand me. We are on the same side. That was my own 
> Damyankee hypothesis, and your wife's comment clearly supports it. For the average 
> Southerner, singular "y'all" is not the hot-button issue it is for so many 
> Southern academics and intellectuals.
> 
> As you say, the repeatedly observed fact is that a singular y'all does 
> exist.  My post merely addressed the striking, dogmatic refusal of some s
> ophisticated Southerners to deny categorically that it can or does.  This is not new, 
> and hardly peculiar to this list.  I find it amazing and symptomatic - of 
> what I'm not certain.
> 
> An inspection of posts on the issue reveals people taxing our credulity to 
> explain away, oinie by one, singular "y'all" : users are "really" (and always) 
> thinking of other persons not present or otherwise referred to, any instance 
> reported by Northerner is untrustworthy, the speaker must have been a 
> transplanted Yankee, the tendency toward singularity of other second-person plural 
> pronouns doesn't matter, the waitress was tired or hung over,  the Southern 
> speaker was deliberately funnin' the interlocutor who she mistakenly took for 
> a furriner, etc.
> 
> What gives?  I'm still awaiting a reference to a printed source claiming 
> that all Southerners use singular "y'all" all the time; maybe there is one.  And 
> don't forget my previous Damyankee hypothesis about the origin of this 
> sensitivity.
> 
> JL
>