Finally!

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 26, 2007, at 2:24 PM, Wilson Gray wrote, to dInIs:


> How does the following, heard on the tube, strike you:
>
> "Step your ass on into this house!"
>
> I have a friend who's used to hearing this kind of construction, but
> he doesn't really understand it, He often greets me by saying, "How's
> your ass?" For a long time, I couldn't understand his interest in the
> state of my arse. Then it occurred to me that he had assumed that
> "your ass" in constructions such as that above was could simply be
> replaced by "you."

ah, there's now a pulished account of "X's ass" for reference to
persons and things:

Beavers, John & Andrew Koontz-Garboden.  2006.   A universal pronoun
in English?. Linguistic Inquiry 37.3.503-513. Download final
published version (via Ingenta):
   http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/linguistic_inquiry/v037/37.3beavers.pdf

arnold

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