AUX+NEG-Fronting

[William Salmon]

> For a very long time, I was under tthe impression that sentences like:
>
> "She's so mean and evil that _can't anybody stay with her_,"

My grandmother would say this. She is 90ish, Caucasian, from rural South
Texas, and middle class.

Among younger generations I would expect to hear this in emphatic or
humorous contexts. I'm sure I've probably used it myself.

Will

>
> once spoken by my mother, was standard English. When  I was in my
> mid-thirties, Haj Ross happened to mention, in the course of a "Baby
> Syntax" (= "Synntax 101" in M.I.T. Linguistics-Dept. jargon) lecture,
> that this kind of thing was peculiar to Black English. This made me
> wonder whether it was also a feature of General Southern English.
>
> However, I was never able to find any white Southerners, though I
> quizzed speakers from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and
> North Carolina. But, no one seemed to be able to say, with any
> certainty. Thanks to the "Blue-Collar Comedians" series on Comedy
> Central, I know for certain that blue-collar Southern whites, at
> least, *do* use this bit of syntactic structure.
>
> So, I'm idly wondering, is this a class thing among Southern whites?
> (It isn't, among blacks. I use it and I don't come from the country or
> from the streets. The only class distinction is "can't *anybody*" as
> opposed to "can't *nobody*": "Can't any cat get into a coop.") Or was
> my sample population simply too small - perhaps ten people - and too
> narrow - all grad students in linguistics?
>
> -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.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



~Will Salmon

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