More non-distributive WHENEVER

[Wilson Gray]

"Poplar Bluff, MO"? Oh, yeah. You must mean that town south of Saint
Louis eggcorned in Saint Louis BE as "Popular Bluff."

In one sense, Poplar Bluff was literally popular, because, once the
train, bus, or car had pulled out of Poplar Bluff, you were finally
out from behind the Cotton Curtain and above the magnolias. In those
days, Poplar Bluff was essentially the location of the isogloss where
outstate-Missouri Southern-style speech ended and Saint Louis
Northern-style. speech began. White people started saying "Sikeston"
instead of "Sackston" and no one confused "boot hill" with "Boot
Heel."

I was quite disappointed to discover that magnolias are a very popular
<har! har!> tree in the greater Boston area. Hence, Saint Louis is
"not hardly" above the magnolias, taking he meaning out of the common
Saint Louis-BE saying, "Ain't it great to be above the magnolias
[outside of the South] on a day like this [one with really beautiful
weather]?"

-Wilson

On 3/15/08, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
>  Organization: Haskins Laboratories
>  Subject:      More non-distributive WHENEVER
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  ESPN just showed a sound-bite from a University of North Carolina
>  basketball player, Tyler Hansborough, describing his thought process
>  behind his last second game-winning shot in UNC's victory over Virginia
>  Tech: "Whenever I caught [the ball], I knew I was going to shoot it."
>  According to his ESPN player profile, he's from Poplar Bluff, MO.
>
>  By a strange coincidence, the piece of paper I grabbed to scribble this
>  example down on already had some similar instances of "whenever", from a
>  more unlikely speaker.
>
>  Last weekend, XM radio Home Ice (their hockey channel) had a lengthy
>  interview with Ted Lindsay, an icon of Detroit hockey, originally from
>  the Ottawa Valley. The sentence that caught my ear was: "I just wanted
>  to be in the courtroom whenever Eagleson pleaded guilty." I subsequently
>  noted "Something was unfair whenever Saskin took over." However, when
>  the temporal clause was sentence initial, he had "when": "When Eagleson
>  pleaded guilty..."
>
> --
>  ========================================================================
>  Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
>  Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
>  New Haven, CT 06511 USA                               fax (203) 865-8963
>
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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

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