Heard on The Judges: "tell NP said"

[Wilson Gray]

"Tell ... say" is a prominent feature of the speech of my mother, born
1913 in Longview, TX. She was probably in her early thirties before
she ever lived north of Tuscaloosa, AL. So, I have a source other than
my own much-corrupted intuition on this. And the short answer is that
the only variant that I know of that I can swear to is "hear tell
say." I.e.

"Johnnie Mae heard tell say (also "heard told me say") Ivan, Jr.,
about to be made a Federal judge."

[It turned that Ivan, Jr., did become a Federal judge. But, since I
have a brother who's a Federal judge, my mother was cool with that.]

Well, a person could also say things like:

"I hear tell say you been trying to shoplift."

That's as far as I can go, using what's left of my intuition. IMO,
someone's vocal cords actually have to vibrate. A person wouldn't say:

"I thought say ..." "It seems to me say" etc.

-Wilson


On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: "tell NP said"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson:
> Is this related to the Gullah/Caribbean Creole use of "seh" as a
> complementizer, roughly equivalent to "that"?  Can it occur with
> verbs NOT involving speaking?
>
> Yours,
> Paul Johnston
> On May 8, 2008, at 11:31 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Heard on The Judges: "tell NP said"
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>> Everybody who cares knows about the BE (and general SE, judging by
>> Comedy Central's good ol' boy comics) "tell NP said" construction.
>>
>> A fancy version spoken by a sixty-ish black woman:
>>
>> "He _had a conversation with me said_ he would get a credit card
>> for me ..."
>>
>>
>> In various readings, I've come across the eye-dialect BE "becase" and
>> I've wondered what it was meant to represent. This same woman used a
>> pronunciation that sounded to me like [bikez] alternating with,
>> perhaps, [bikEz]. She also pronounced "power" as [pauv@] alternating
>> with [pauw@], i.e. [-auv@] alternating with usual (but becoming ever
>> less so - a casualty of desegregation, no doubt - with [au] being
>> replaced by sE [aeu]) [-auw@]. I've heard this kind of pronunciation
>> used by Louis Armstrong, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, etc., in
>> singing, but this is first time that I can recall hearing it in
>> ordinary speech.
>>
>> -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
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> 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