Is there such a phenomenon as "undercorrection/hypocorrection?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Wilson, ever notice how many of Jerry's guests have low-prestige Southern or AAVE accents?  Maybe the producers think the NYC Leo Gorcey types are too scary.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Is there such a phenomenon as
"undercorrection/hypocorrection?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matt, you need to spend more time watching trash TV. Watch the "Jerry
Springer" show and/or the "Maury" show. Either of these programs
provides straight-from-the-horse's-mouth examples of what's
possible in a wide selection of non-standard varieties of English as
spoken by blacks, whites, and Latins. The catch - isn't there always
one? - is that you very rarely get any information as to where the
speakers are from. And, even when you do, you don't get any
information as to what part of town the person lives in, his age, etc.

As it happens, in the particular case under discussion, it was
revealed that the speaker lived in Providence, RI, as Judge Joe Brown
read aloud the defendant's criminal record. That's more information
than is usually available about a given "guest" on one of these shows.

-Wilson

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
>Subject: Re: Is there such a phenomenon as
> "undercorrection/hypocorrection?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>OK, but if the man was motivated, as Wilson suggested, by trying to =
>standard up his speech for the judge, why go vernacular? What I was =
>suggesting was that he was reinterpreting "whose" as a contraction =
>(who's) and uncontracting in deference to the formality of the situation =
>or to his addressee. As we all know, contractions are a sign of laziness =
>so he'd want to avoid them here.
>
>BTW, is possessive 'who' actually attested for AAVE? I know that the =
>possessive marker on nouns is variably dropped - though not as =
>frequently as the 3rd sg. verbal marker is - but I don't recall having =
>heard or read (in the literature) examples of it dropping from 'whose'.=20
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Dennis R. Preston
>Sent: Wed 3/16/2005 7:07 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Is there such a phenomenon as =
>"undercorrection/hypocorrection?
>=20
>Nope; his analysis is (if I may speak for him) it that the possessive
>;'whose" is replaced by the form 'who,' perfectly expressive of the
>possessive (as we find in numerous varieties of AAVE, clearer perhaps
>in such forms as "I saw Mary car," i.e. "Mary's").
>
>dInIs
>
>>So by Wilson's analysis what the man said was
>>"He aks me 'who's, uh, who car was it?"
>>Right? In other words he was uncontracting a contraction in this formal
>>context.
>>
>>
>>On 3/16/05 4:58 PM, "Wilson Gray" wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, they both were. It was the "Judge Joe Brown" show, which is a
>>> clone of "Judge Judy," if you're not familiar with it. Anyway, Judge
>>> Joe has absolutely no sympathy for the common street thug and has
>>> made that very clear. My impression was that the speaker, a common
>>> street thug, suddenly became aware of the difference between his
>>> low-class BE and the judge's middle-class BE. And, knowing that =
>Judge
>>> Joe Brown is not the kind of brother that you can conversate with, =
>he
>>> decided that it would behoove him to talk as "proper" as he could.
>>> But you really have to have had practice in order to switch to
>>> another dialect in mid-utterance, unless you're doing it all the
> >> time. I think our guy meant to shift "aks" to "ast" or even "asted,"
> >> but it was already too late and he wound up "down-shifting," so to
> >> speak, from the "proper" "whose" to "who" by accident.
>>>
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>> -----------------------
>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>> Poster: Beverly Flanigan
>>>> Subject: Re: Is there such a phenomenon as
>>>> "undercorrection/hypocorrection?
>>>>
>>>>----------------------------------------------------------------------=
>-------
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Were both the interviewer and the guest black? Might this have =
>been
>>>> accommodation to an "in-group" interlocutor?
>>>>
>>>> At 04:14 PM 3/16/2005, you wrote:
>>>>> Spoken by a black TV-show guest:
>>>>>
>>>>> He aks me _whose, uh, who_ car was this.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Wilson
>
>
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African =
>Languages
>A-740 Wells Hall
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing, MI 48824
>Phone: (517) 432-3099
>Fax: (517) 432-2736
>preston at msu.edu


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