positive 'anymore' (again)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 5/2/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> At 2:39 PM -0400 5/2/06, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
> >
> >I think Larry even admitted once that he's trying to learn the structure,
> >which is not native to him!  But it IS common throughout the (North)
> >Midland and is rapidly spreading westward, as we've discussed many times on
> >this list.  (Charlie, see our archives on positive 'anymore'.)  It was new
> >to me in 1980, coming down from Minnesota, but I suspect it goes a ways
> >back.  Its history, anyone?
>
> We've had some discussions on the list that should be archived.
> Scots-Irish and regional English, IIRC.  I remember citing the OED
> entry (under MORE), and Lawrence's "Suffering bores me any more"
> (Birkin, from _Women in Love_), and providing some references,
> including
>
> Murray, Thomas E. 1993. "Positive anymore in the Midwest." In Frazer
> (ed.), "Heartland" English: Variation and Transition in the American
> Midwest. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 173-86.

ADS-L discussion from Oct. '04, with OED cites, here:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410d&L=ads-l&P=22388

I recently had opportunity to cite one of the Irish cites (from Tom
Murphy's 1961 play "A Whistle in The Dark": "We'll squeeze Michael a
bit. He'll chip in anymore") in this Language Log post (about an
article in the Guardian about the Oxford English Corpus):

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003098.html


--Ben Zimmer

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