positive anymore

Beverly Flanigan flanigan at OHIO.EDU
Thu May 18 17:33:29 UTC 2006


I just talked about this in my Soclx class yesterday and got the most
puzzled looks from all but the Midland Ohioans in the class
(predictably).  "Needs washed/fixed/done" was also new to most but not
puzzling; i.e., outsiders could figure it out.  Positive "anymore"
presented a meaning problem which took some time to disambiguate.  Shades
of Trudgill's polylectalism vs. panlectalism argument with C-J Bailey.

At 12:44 PM 5/18/2006, you wrote:
>Speaking of positive "anymore" (as we were a few weeks ago), did anyone note
>the brief note in American Speech in 1931 (6.5, p460) by Kemp Malone? Malone
>says that he had never heard of it, but a reader reported it from West
>Virginia
>and says it is heard not merely from "shopgirls" but from "teachers."
>
>You can access the article through JSTOR and download it as a pdf file.
>
>I don't think that ADS-L will let me send it as an attached file.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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



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