A positive anymore?

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:12 PM -0400 10/17/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>From a review of a shareware app:
>
>[T]his is an update from a version 1 to a version 2, yet the
>developers are not charging for it! That's getting to be pretty rare,
>_anymore_.
>
>There's a certain degree of semantic negation implied in "rare," so
>I'm not sure that the example counts.
>
>-Wilson

It counts, and this would be impossible for pure non-pos-"anymore"
speakers given the syntactic frame (vs. "It's pretty rare that you'd
see that sort of thing anymore"), but as you say the "rare" helps;
the same example with "pretty frequent anymore" would be somewhat
less likely, as I read you as suggesting.  I just heard my favorite
pos-"anymore" speaker, Joe Benigno of WFAN whose echt-Noo-Yawkuh
speech pattern clashes so vividly with those positive "anymore"s he's
so fond of, produce another one.  Talking about not being able to
listen to the post-season games on the radio with the favored
announcers while watching the TV feed with the sound turned down, he
mentioned the several seconds TV delay that has rendered this
practice obsolete, and complained,

"That's the way it is anymore".

(This is the same guy who I have on tape saying "Another agita
special.  The Knicks are a different team from kwawduh duh kwawduh
anymaw!")

LH

P.S. Note that these examples, while unlicensed by negation, do have
the negative affect you often find, as e.g. in the famous D. H.
Lawrence line "Suffering bores me any more".

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