Reversals in usage judgements (was: Pronuncations)

[Damien Hall]

Inspired by the reversal in usage judgement that Barbara Need reported by
her student for _often_:

This isn't quite a reversal in usage judgement, but I was once doing an
experiment on uses of the preterite and perfect to express past time. The
basic pattern is that AmE can say

(1) 'Did you eat yet today?'

(the questioner is asking whether someone has eaten during a period of time
which is still going on) and

(2) 'Did you eat yesterday?'

(the questioner is asking whether someone has eaten during a period of time
which has finished); whereas BrE can (indeed, must) say (2) for a
time-period which has finished but, for the meaning of (1), a time-period
which has not completely finished, must say

(1') Have you eaten yet today?'.

For a speaker of BrE to say (1) would be marked as 'American' for people
familiar enough with AmE, and maybe just as 'wrong' by someone who wasn't
familiar enough with AmE.

One of my American subjects, though, insisted that (1') was just wrong, and
he may even have said that, for a time-period which had completely elapsed,
he would have said

(2') 'Have you eaten yesterday?'

- which would have been the reversal of the BrE pattern. I wouldn't like to
swear that he said (2') would be correct for him, but he certainly said
(1') would be incorrect, whereas all the other American subjects simply
said (as I expected) that they would understand (1'), and wouldn't think it
was wrong, but wouldn't say it either.

One more for the files?

Damien Hall

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK

Tel. (office) 01904 432665
     (mobile) 0771 853 5634
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