Quotative [to be] + "that"

[Wilson Gray]

On Mar 26, 2005, at 12:15 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Quotative [to be] + "that"
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> On Mar 25, 2005, at 7:38 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> I agree with you in principle, Arnold, but the structure you're
>> attempting to validate and explain seems to require many more exx. -
>> particularly, as Peter says, plural exx. in a single discourse -
>> simply to confirm its existence.  Exx. of "is is" are everywhere in
>> speech, but I'm not sure at all that the existence of this putative
>> "new structure" is similarly well established.
>
> exx. of "is is" are indeed everywhere in speech.  but linguists have
> denied this on the basis of their recollections.  when pat mcconvell
> reported examples of "is is" on the Linguist List, someone replied that
> that might be so elsewhere but she'd never heard any such thing in
> australian english, and mcconvell (an australian) noted that virtually
> all his examples *were* from australian english, where the construction
> could be heard all the time.

FWIW, the fact that I'm an "is is" speaker was pointed out to me by
Phil LeSourd of the Dept. of Anthro, at Indiana. This was in 1977, when
he and I were roommates. At first, I refused to believe that this "'is
is" was a feature of my idiolect, since I had never heard myself use
such ungrammatical syntax. When I use ungrammatical English, it's on
purpose and I'm fully aware of it. However, after a couple of hours of
having Phil point out each occurrence of my use of "is is," I was
forced to admit that "'is is" *is* a feature of my idiolect. Until I'd
read of other instances of "is is" posted here, I thought that I was
the only "is is" speaker on the face of the earth. I exaggerate, of
course. In truth, I'd never given it a second thought till it began to
be discussed here.

Hey, you think maybe I'm, like, the originator of this anomaly? ;-)

-Wilson Gray

>
>> Obviously there can be weird new developments  in language that need
>> explanation, and obviously they may spread slowly at first, like an
>> epidemic, and then appear everywhere.  But I think that this
>> phenomenon needs to better substantiated.
>
> jon, you have said that you'd never heard things -- well, that you
> don't recall having heard things -- like plain-quotative BE ("She was,
> 'I have to go now' ") or plain-reportative BE ("She was that she'd have
> to go then"), so you don't believe they exist.  i have said that i've
> seen a fair number of examples of the first and that i believed i'd
> heard some of the second.
>
> you seem to think that your recollections have priority over mine.  i
> find that insulting.  you're telling me i'm making things up.  i could
> claim in response that you're listening with deaf ears.
>
> yes, we need data, but why should you dismiss  my recollections out of
> hand?  what am i, chopped liver?
>
> i've tried to explain why i'm not leaping to scroll out dozens of
> examples: i haven't been coding for these or specifically collecting
> them and they can't be gotten in easy database searches, so we're
> talking about a major investment of my time to find the examples.  even
> if i come across some more by accident, you won't accept them unless
> there's a significant body of them.
>
> i'm pretty sure they're out there.  so we should be encouraging
> researchers to look for them.  you seem to be saying that you don't
> think they're out there and won't even credit my perceptions unless i
> myself can supply a body of evidence, now.
>
> i agree that evidence is necessary.  but i could ask *you* to show that
> there are no examples in, say, two or three million words of
> conversational spoken english.  i'd be impressed by that.  why don't
> *you* get on the job?
>
> arnold
>