Finally!
Dennis Preston
preston at MSU.EDU
Wed Sep 26 10:50:19 UTC 2007
Wilson,
I was down with "fuck over NP"; it was "fuck over PRO" I can't handle
(except, as one of our contributors pointed out, when it is a
preposition, although I would prefer "on top of" in that situation).
dInIs
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>Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject: Re: Finally!
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>dInIs, you're "one of them good folk who come from home," as the old
>Jimmy Coe recitation (by which I mean, roughly, a commercial
>phonographic recording of a particular variety of story-telling, the
>whole "verse" is:
>
>A. Look! There's that old Georgia boy!
>B. Yeah. One of them good folk who come from home)
>
>has it. (If anyone cares, thirty seconds of Chuck Berry's recitation,
>"No Money Down," can be heard for no money down at the iTunes store.)
>Hence, I always expect that you will be down. So, in this case, I
>suppose that the BE peculiarity can be reduced to finding only "fuck
>over NP" grammatical. Actually, I wouldn't be entirely shocked to hear
>a black speaker use "fuck NP over." One of the more unspeakable,
>horrible consequences of desegregation is grammar-mixing, though my
>own unhappy experience has been that, except for that one, brief,
>shining moment in the barracks, in vain have I corrected the white
>folk, for they have not received instruction.
>
>-Wilson
>
>On 9/25/07, Dennis Preston <preston at msu.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: Finally!
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I am a 'fuck over' speaker since the mid to late 1940's (which does
>> not at all challenge its perhaps earlier greater frequency in the
>> AfrAmer community). But if I had been in Wlson's barracks, I would
>> not have freaked.
>>
>> I do not accept "fuck over him" any more than I would accept "looked
>> over him" (for eyeball, investigate, assess). "Fuck over N" or "fuck
>> N over" are both OK by me; It's the pronoun that fucks up it.
>>
>> dInIs
>>
>>
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>> >-----------------------
>> >Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> >Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> >Subject: Re: Finally!
>> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >What Jon said.
>> >
>> >As for my claim that there's a relationship to race, "fuck over" has
>> >been a BE street (and, in some households, a home) colloquialism that
>> >I've been familiar with since the beginning of time. But this, in my
>> >experience, is not the case among white speakers. As an example the
>> >racial bit, in 1960, I once used the term in the barracks at the Army
>> >Language School. I asked, "Have you guys heard about the way that the
>> >First shirt fucked over Lupow?" And my barracks-mates, all of whom
>> >were white (during the time that I was at the Language School, among
>> >approximately 400 students in the Russian Division, there were only
>> >two black GI"s: your humble correspondent and a WAC with a big butt),
>> >freaked. Not a single one had ever heard the phrase, "fuck over,"
>> >before. I was stunned, since I know it like I know my own name.
>> >Naturally, they thought that it was really cool and wanted to learn
>> >it. (I had to teach some people that you say "FUCK over" and not "fuck
>> >OVER"). I first heard the expression, "fuck someone over" ca.1970 and,
>> >from that time to the present, I've never heard it used by blacks
>> >under any circumstances, despite any literary evidence to the
>> >contrary, possibly because I've never been a fan of Louis Armstrong,
>> >etc., not to mention that no such record would ever have been played
> > >on the radio and it's doubtful that it would have been sold in any
> > >black record shop, back in the day, any more than a black store or
>> >shop would have sold pornography. Till at least the 'Seventies, the
>> >most erotic material freely available in black-operated stores was
>> >Playboy, Jet magazine, and the Jet girlie calendar. I went to grade
>> >school with Lamont McLemore, Jet's longtime girlie photographer -
>> >since ca.1950 - and also a member of the Fifth Dimension, the formerly
>> >well-known Saint Louis singing group. He was a Renaissance man, I
>> >reckon. It must have been a hard life, since Lamont, though he was
>> >younger than I am, died several years ago.
>> >
>> >-Wilson
>> >
>> >As for the syntax, saying "He fucked over me," etc., sounds completely
>> >natural to me. OTOH, "He fucked me over"
>> >
>> >
>> >On 9/24/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> >>-----------------------
>> >> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> >> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>> >> Subject: Re: Finally!
>> >>
>> >>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >>
>> >> Though skin pigmentation is irrelevant per se, HDAS suggests (and
>> >>I believe) that "to fuck over X"
>> >>
>> >> a. was indeed the original form in the sense in question,
>> >>
>> >> b. has been vastly more prevalent among speakers of AAVE - so
>> >>much so as to sugget the idiom's origin there,
>> >>
>> >> c. was not much used in white speech before the mid '70s,
>> >>
>> >> d. still sounds rhythmically or positionally "wrong" to me as a
>> >>speaker of WAVE.
>> >>
>> >> Earliest HDAS ex. is from 1961, but the context suggests it was
>> >>around for a while.
>> >>
>> >> The form "fuck X over" undoubtedly owes something to "work X
>> >>over." I believe this is becoming the general form.
>> >>
>> >> JL
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> >>-----------------------
>> > > Sender: American Dialect Society
>> >> Poster: Wilson Gray
>> >> Subject: Finally!
>> >>
>> >>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >>
>> >> The correct usage has appeared in print! From Slashdot:
>> >>
>> >> "... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck over_ other
>> >> corporations who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..."
>> >>
>> >> Lest the point be missed, for those of us old enough (and/or
>>black enough?),
>> >>
>> >> "... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck_ other corporations
>> >> _over_ who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..." is
>> >> ungrammatical.
>> >>
>> >> That is, [fuck NP over] is absolutely *not* a viable or a grammatical
>> >>
>> >> alternative to [fuck over NP]. Unless, of course, you speak a
>> >> different dialect.
>> >>
>> >> There are 215,000 raw Google hits that include uses such as "get the
>> >> fuck over it." So, sorting out the various usages would take ten men
>> >> and a boy. But the Urban Dictionary, at least, has it right. Well,
>> >> sort of. The second definition defines _fuck over_ as a Briticism
>> >> meaning "fuck over," with examples ambiguous as to dialect. And either
>> >> UD doesn't have "fuck NP over" (unlikely?) or I don't know how to find
>> >> it (likely?).
>> >>
>> >> -Wilson
>> >>
>> >> -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
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> ---------------------------------
>> >>
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>> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>> >
>> >
>> >--
>> >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
--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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