Fwd: "Hit 'em where they ain't" (1901)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> Date: May 11, 2005 5:09:07 PM PDT
> To: Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: "Hit 'em where they ain't" (1901)
>
>
>
> On May 11, 2005, at 11:07 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>
>> On 5/11/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu> cited:
>>
>>
>>> ... Willie Keeler is always prepared for anything that comes
>>> along. Yesterday
>>> a Philadelphia fan approached him and inquired what was the
>>> principal
>>> attribute of a successful batter.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Do what?
>>
>> (a) "...inquired what was the principal attribute of a successful
>> batter."
>>
>> and not
>>
>> (b) "...inquired what the principal attribute of a successful
>> batter was"?!
>>
>> What's up with this? Isn't (b) the "correct" word order?
>>
>
> yes.
>
>
>> Hasn't no
>> less a light than William Labov stated that the (a) form is peculiar
>> to the currently so-called "AAVE"?
>>
>
> i'm away from my sources (somewhat under the weather at home), but
> i remember labov as saying that inversion in embedded
> interrogatives was characteristic of AAVE (then called BEV), not
> that it was peculiar to it.  that is, the claim was that AAVE
> speakers used this option a lot, but other nonstandard speakers
> sometimes used it as well.
>
> in any case, this would be my assessment of the situation, though
> no doubt the matter has been studied.
>
> *however*, the examples labov was looking at were things like
>   I asked what was the answer.
> (where the inverted subject is relatively short and light).  ben
> zimmer's cite has a long and heavy inverted subject, and these are
> likely to invert for almost anyone, of any race, at least in speech
> or informal writing; without inversion, you have a sentence ending
> in a long and heavy constituent followed by a single-word
> auxiliary. which is strongly disfavored.
>
> arnold
>
>