Heard on The Judges: sE > to BE

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 8, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Dennis Preston wrote:

> Interesting when a specific nonstandard is felt to be required (as it
> often is from AAVE). Are there other regional nonstandards required
> in such phrases.

well, not tied to a specific region, but "play it as it lays" (i
posted on this on Language Log a long time ago).

   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000875.html

and "them's the breaks".

and then there's a bunch where auxiliary reduction is essentially
obligatory: "how's the boy?" 'how are you?' [to a man] and a lot of
others.  this isn't non-standard, though.

arnold

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