Negative inversion

Matthew Gordon gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU
Thu Jan 22 20:30:35 UTC 2009


It's the absence of BE (isn't, ain't) in the Twain sentence that's weirding
me out. I've never heard "there can('t)" without 'be' as a variant of the
existential construction, but then I don't get out much.


On 1/22/09 2:08 PM, "Charles Doyle" <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:

> I'd say "there" in the Twain quotation ("There can't ANYBODY spoil her")
> functions as "the existential dummy pronoun" (so to speak).  It's deletable.
> Stylistic variants would be "There isn't anybody can spoil her" or "It isn't
> anybody can spoil her."
>
> It sounds grammatically "real" to ME!
>
> --Charlie
> _____________________________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:52:28 -0600
>> From: Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: Negative inversion
>>
>>
>> Thanks to Will, Wilson, and Charlie for their responses to my question.
>>
>> The Twain example that Will provided sounds even weirder ("There can't
>> ANYBODY spoil her"). Is that "there" the existential dummy pronoun or just an
>> adverb? Is the former interpretation grammatical for any real variety of
>> English?
>>
>>
>> On 1/20/09 6:05 PM, "William Salmon" <william.salmon at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>> My grandmother in Texas would probably say that. And here's Mark Twain
>>> in "A Horse's Tale":
>>>
>>> "Why, of course, of course - I knew you'd spoil the child."
>>>
>>> She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity:
>>>
>>> "Spoil the child? spoil THAT child, Marse Tom? There can't ANYBODY
>>> spoil her. She's the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her
>>> and is her slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain't
>>> the least little bit spoiled."
>>>
>>>
>>>> And the reply is: "Cant anybody catch that fish."
>>>>
>>>> There appears to be negative inversion without negative concord/multiple
>>>> negation. I would have expected "Cant nobody catch that fish" = Std.
>>>> "Nobody
>>>> can catch that fish." Elsewhere some of the boy's companions use mult.
>>>> negation (e.g. "We wont catch none nowhere if we dont go on"), and in an
>>>> earlier part of the book there's a negative inversion with multiple
>>>> negation
>>>> ("Cant nobody see down here from the house, noways").
>>>>
>>>> Has anyone encountered something like this (cant anybody) in the wild? I
>>>> wondering whether this is just a Faulknerian creation.
>>>>
>>>> I suppose it's possible that I've got the wrong interpretation of the
>>>> meaning. Perhaps it's "That fish can't be caught by just anyone". It's not
>>>> clear from the context.
>>>>
>>>> -Matt Gordon
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ~Will Salmon
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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