Heard on "The People's Court"

[Wilson Gray]

Uh, I think that I'm missing your point. My point is that "He came at
me with a gun" is necessarily threatening, whereas "He came to me with
a gun" is not necessarily threatening and may be totally
non-threatening.

As a consequence, failing to distinguish between, e.g. "My sister came
_at_ me (to do me harm)" from "My sister came _to_ me (to ask me a
favor)" impoverishes the language.

In my part of Texas, FWIW, forms like "holler at" (with the same
meanings that it has in hip-hop slang) and "listen at" (in place of
mainstream "listen to") are "standard," so to speak, in the local
dialect of BE. Of course, "holler, listen, yell, talk" are not verbs
of motion and are, therefore, irrelevant.

-Wilson

On 8/24/06, Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on "The People's Court"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> You've never heard, "He came at me with a gun"? I've lived all around this country, and I hear different variations--gun, knife, razor, baseball bat. Street language.
>
>   Are you horrified? That's what you get for watching PEOPLE'S COURT .
>
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>   Spoken by a black? Latin? black Latin? plaintiff:
>
> "My sister came _at_ me and aksed me to watch her kids for her."
>
> Though she did say, once, "... came _to_ me ..., " she used "... came
> at me ..." about a dozen times.
>
> I really hope that this use of "at" doesn't catch on. AFAIK, languages
> that distinguish "[verb of motion] at" (threatening) from "[verb of
> motion] to" (non-threatening) in the way that English does are rare.
>
> -Wilson
> --
> There's only one thing that money can't buy and that's poverty.
>
> -Jack Benny
>
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--
There's only one thing that money can't buy and that's poverty.

--Jack Benny

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