Positive anymore caught in the wild

[Beverly Flanigan]

Now you can listen for different locations of the "anymore":
Anymore I bruise really easily.
I bruise anymore really easily.

Not all users put it in all three positions--initial, medial, and final;
and there's an implicational order here which I can't remember from my desk
at home.  Tom Murray had maps on the spread, at least for Ohio (and so did
I, in a smaller study); I'll check in my office.  As an example, my
Akron-raised colleague uses it initially, and I think finally, but I'm not
sure about medially.

Beverly

At 06:28 PM 8/12/2007, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject:      Re: Positive anymore caught in the wild
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>You're right , dInIs. There was definitely no comma intonation in her
>speech. I put one in only because I learned to punctuate that way in
>some otherwise-forgotten English-grammar class of my youth. And, even
>so, I didn't put in the comma till after I had studied over it. Well,
>as folk say, "You study long, you study wrong." (I've come across this
>as "You think long, you think wrong." As Richard Pryor once eloquently
>put it: "Unreal. And I ain't going for it.") She definitely said:
>
>I bruise really easily anymore ...
>
>It was the best positive anymore that I ever heard. There was a point
>in my life when such a sentence would have been indecipherable.
>They're still good for a laugh. Speaking of laughing, it's funny how
>the peculiarities of the speech of others sound so strange, whereas
>the peculiarities of one's own speech merely sound normal. Cf., e.g.
>people who pronounce "ten" as "tan" instead of as "tin."
>
>-Wilson
>
>On 8/12/07, Dennis Preston <preston at msu.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Positive anymore caught in the wild
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Wilson,
> >
> > Are you sure about the comma between "easily" and "anymore"? I
> > haven't observed it in such speakers (assuming it means a
> > characteristic junctural intonation fact).
> >
> > dInIs
> >
> >
> > >---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > >-----------------------
> > >Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > >Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > >Subject:      Positive anymore caught in the wild
> > >-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
> > >
> > >Spoken by my wife, a native of the Wyoming Valley of the Suquehanna
> > >River in NE PA:
> > >
> > >_I bruise really easily, anymore_, so I have to be careful about
> > >bumping into things.
> > >
> > >-Wilson
> > >--
> > >All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> > >come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > >-----
> > >                                               -Sam'l Clemens
> > >
> > >------------------------------------------------------------
> > >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Dennis R. Preston
> > University Distinguished Professor
> > Department of English
> > Morrill Hall 15-C
> > Michigan State University
> > East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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