"Is, is"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Feb 23, 2006, at 6:43 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> The use of "is, is" has been mentioned here. I've just heard a
> Springer guest say, "What happened  _was, is_ ..."

not incredibly common, but well attested.  examples in my "extra is"
files:

collected by:           was, is         was is          total           out of

AZ                              3                       2                       5               112
DB                              2                       3                       5               39
DM                              3                       0                       3               33
PC                              0                       2                       2               57
JW                              0                       1                       1               11
KC                              0                       9                       9               33
total                           8                       17                      25              285

so "was(,) is" constitutes about 8.8% of the total.  i wouldn't put a
lot of significance on the punctuation, by the way.

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org