Positive anymore still once again

[Beverly Flanigan]

Roger, you're from Akron, as I recall?  I never get Cleveland students who
say it, but Akron, Marion, Mansfield, etc. are all in the North Midland
belt and use it.  I have a colleague from Akron who uses it, of course, as
does a colleague from Peru, Indiana (that's ['pe ru]).  And I recall
hearing David Letterman use it once (he's from Indiana too, though I can't
recall the city); as in your case, the audience was silent, failing to
catch whatever the joke was that hinged on understanding positive
'anymore'.  (They were silent when he used "needs washed" once too.)

As a non-user from Minnesota, my own first hearing of it was at the ADS
summer meeting in Albuquerque in 1980, when Frank Parker gave a paper on
all the possible and impossible uses of it.  I still have that handout
somewhere.

Beverly Flanigan
Athens, Ohio (where it's not used natively either)

At 08:31 PM 5/2/2006, you wrote:
>To add a bit of history, maybe.
>
>About thirty or more years ago, at one of the early NWAV meetings (when we
>still held them all at Georgetown, where NWAV started), I, as usual, had a
>houseful of speakers staying with me. One of them was my good friend, Bill
>Labov. The five or six people staying with me always had long discussions at
>my home after the meetings ended, often going into the wee hours. At one of
>these, I made a  comment something like, "Anymore we have some really good
>talks at NWAV." The room went silent, then Bill asked me about this
>construction, which was so native to me that I didn't have a clue about why
>the rest of the room was amused, or surprised, or something. I believe this
>discussion was a stimulus to the following ongoing research on positive
>anymore. The rest is history.I still use it unabashedly and I still can't
>figure out why others are amused, surprised or something. Sounds just fine
>to me.
>
>Roger
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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