a locus classicus for fronted "anymore"

[Matthew Gordon]

Actually, according to Murray's study in _Heartland English_ (1993), it's
not that common in the upper Midwest, at least the version of it that LH
noted in the orignal post. Murray didn't tabulate his results in a way that
makes exact counts easy, but it looks like he found only a couple of dozen
Wisconin respondents (out of 761 surveyed) accepting of the sentence "Well,
anymore people just don't save their money like they used to." (i.e. one
with fronted anymore in a negated clause). The numbers are similar for
Minnesota (13 out of 736 accepted it).

Non-fronted positive anymore was found to be accepted by more people
including those in the upper Midwest. It looks like Murray found 20 out of
42 people in Madison accepted it in "He used to take naps on the couch, but
he sprawls out in that new lounge chair anymore." Still that seems to be a
lower acceptance rate than in Midlands locales. 115 out of 131 people from
Des Moines, e.g., accepted that positive anymore sentence and 82 of them
also liked the fronted negative example above.


On 8/18/09 3:06 PM, "ronbutters at AOL.COM" <ronbutters at AOL.COM> wrote:

> I wonder how many times fronted positive ANYMORE has been discussed here! Yes
> it is common in the upper Midwest and is a feature so commonly noted that one
> wonders how anyone could find it remarkable, let alone painful. It is indeed
> no wonder that Roger Shuy, Dennis Preston, and now Arnold Zwicky have
> cancelled out.
> ------Original Message------
> From: Laurence Horn
> Sender: ADS-L
> To: ADS-L
> ReplyTo: ADS-L
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] a locus classicus for fronted "anymore"
> Sent: Aug 18, 2009 1:33 PM
>
> At 11:58 AM -0500 8/18/09, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>>>
>>>  I'm surprised! I must have heard more positive (including fronted)
>>>  _anymore_s during the four years I lived in Wisconsin than I heard in my
>>>  other 60 years living in the Northeast and California.
>>
>>
>> I'm surprised as well. I've lived in Wisconsin all my life (four years in
>> the Madison area and 30 in the west central area), and I can't remember
>> hearing natives of either area using positive "anymore" on any regular (or
>> irregular) basis. Whereabouts did you live in Wisconsin.
>
> Madison (1977-81)
>
> LH
>
>> This is very
>> interesting. Wonder what DARE says about this for Wisconsin.... (Joan?)
>>
>> Scot
>>
>>
>
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