"didn't" with ?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Oct 9 18:01:51 UTC 2006


Did we already have a discussion at some point about the
(innovative?) dialectal pronunciation of what we might call 'the
"didn't" of incredulity' as in "No, you (she, they) dI?In" (with
falling tone)?  I hear it on SNL or MadTV, but not in real life, and
it seems to express incredulity/amazement/scorn/..., along the lines
of 'I'm surprised that you (she, they) did'.  Anyone have a rough and
ready characterization of the phonetics and/or sociolinguistics of
this marker?

LH

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