"so Auxn't NP"

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:05 PM -0400 7/19/07, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>>*My favorite instance of this construction is a headline in the
>>sports pages of a Boston paper in the fall of 1971:
>>
>>THE COLTS WANT THIS ONE?
>>SO DON'T THE PATS!
>>
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>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>I once asked Labov about this, and he immediately confirmed the positive
>meaning and said New Englanders use it.  I don't recall where I first
>heard/saw it, but I assumed it meant "Neither do I"--the usual
>misapprehension, of course.
>
Well, in context, that's a relatively unlikely misapprehension, since
the "so don't I" (etc.) always follows a positive assertion (whether
uttered or, as above, conveyed), where a "neither do I" would be
uninterpretable.  But the "so do I" reading doesn't seem to occur to
those unfamiliar with the construction, nor does the reading actually
intended by the Shakespearean English occurrences of "so do not I",
viz. "(But) I don't".  I think the normal response to "So don't I" by
an uninitiate is "Hunh?"

LH

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