-body vs. -one

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:41 AM -0600 1/3/09, Murrah Lee wrote:
>I saw an old Sherlock Holmes movie, "Terror by Night," last night, and
>one of the characters-- Inspector LaStrade, I think--said that
>"Somebody (did something)" rather than "Someone (did something)".  I
>grew up in East Texas in the 1950s, and we always used the -body
>form.  However, I have lived in Iowa and Michigan as an adult, and
>there they generally use the -one form.  I assume that Southerners
>tend to use -body and Northerners -one. I wonder if someone can give
>insight into the cultural origins of the use of -body (as in somebody)
>vs. -one (as in someone).  I suspect it reflects that the South was
>influenced more by southern and southwestern England while New England
>and the Midwest by eastern England.
>
Aren't there a lot of speakers and writers who use both forms freely?
I'm not saying interchangeably, since I'm sure there are subtle
differences, possibly in register (-one being more more formal?) but
I'm hard pressed to say what the difference is for me, and I'm sure I
use both in relatively free distribution.

It would be interesting to see if there's any quantitative work on
this, with regional or other parameters of variation.

LH

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