'what everything' hypercorrection

[Wilson Gray]

Isn't it also the case that expressions like "who-all" and "what all" are
basically considered to be countrified? When I hear, e.g. "I don't know what
all ..." Andy Griffith springs to mind.

-Wilson

On 8/1/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> 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: 'what everything' hypercorrection
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 1, 2006, at 2:34 PM, Bill Lemay wrote:
>
> >> I had never heard 'what everything' for 'what all' before.  Have
> >> other
> > people?
> >>
> >> Damien Hall
> >> University of Pennsylvania
> >
> > I have often heard it framed this way:
> >
> > 'I really admired her, what with everything she went through.'
>
> true enough, but the "what with" construction is a sentence-adverbial
> construction, not usable in the positions of the "what
> everything" (and "what all") constructions we've been looking at.
> and the "everything" here is not a fixed part of the construction,
> which can have almost *any* NP in this position:
>    what with the troubles (that) she had
>    what with the troubles that beset her
> the "what with" construction (or family of constructions) just
> happens to bear some superficial resemblances to the examples we've
> been looking at.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
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--
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out
the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them.

Frederick Douglass

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