"have ever been"

[Lynne Murphy]

May have missed someone else mentioning this but...

While I consider 'I am and have ever been X' a bit weird, I find 'I am and
will ever be X' completely natural (idiomatic, but natural).

"am and have ever been" = 31 google hits
"am and will ever be" = 897 google hits

"am and will always be" = 32,000
"am and have always been" 28,300

Lynne


--On Thursday, September 14, 2006 10:06 am -0400 "Mark A. Mandel"
<mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

> Ron writes:
>>>>
>
> I remember a drinking song from college (or was it from Boy Scout camp?)
> that had the line, "One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so."
>
> <<<
>
> That's "Green Grow the Rushes"
> (http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=2413), which I can imagine
> being used as a drinking song though I have never heard it that way.
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel, The Filker With No Nickname
>    http://filk.cracksandshards.com/



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer and Head of Department
Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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