Positive anymore still once again

[Paul A Johnston, Jr.]

Dear Roger, Beverly, and the list,

Interesting.  My data squares with yours.  My wife is from Cleveland, and she and all her father's
side relatives are non-users.  But her mother's side, from the PA/WV border area (and one of the
most interesting transition zones I've ever heard people from--Monongalia Co.), are solid users, in all
contexts.  My two nieces, born in Cleveland, raised in rural Medina and Ashland counties, are non-
users too.
I'm from Northwest/North Central New Jersey, and I'd never use it in a million years, despite the
presence of a few Midland phonological features amidst a general New York-like framework, but I bet
it's quite common once you get south of the Raritan Valley.
It's foreign here in Kalamazoo, MI.

Yours,
Paul Johnston


----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Shuy <rshuy at MONTANA.COM>
Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2006 10:48 pm
Subject: Re: Positive anymore still once again

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header ------------
> -----------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Roger Shuy <rshuy at MONTANA.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Positive anymore still once again
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Positive anymore still once again
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------->
> -
> >
> > Roger, you're from Akron, as I recall?
>
>        That's right. As McDavid used to say, people who moved to
> work in
> Akron's rubber factories came from south of there, where there was low
> fertility of soil and high fertility of family. It was made up of
> about 40%
> West Virginians when I lived there (including the mayor).
>
> 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.)
>
>        So what's funny about "needs washed"? Still sounds fine to me.
> >
> > 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.
>
>        Hmm. I never saw that paper or even heard about it.
> >
> > 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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