Heard on The Judges: " -nim" in possessive

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:30 AM -0500 1/29/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Judge Penny (late-forty-ish black woman from Atlanta):
>
>"How you gon' have five girlfriends and be so broke that you still
>livin' in _yo' mama-nim house_?!"
>
>
>I've never heard it expressed this way, before. I would have expected:
>
>"... still livin' in the house _wit' cho' mama-nim_?!"
>
>
also rendered (for varieties of EA (and AA?) speakers in Pittsburgh
and environs as well as southerners of all ethnicities) as "mamanem"
and "mommanem", which are slightly more transparent (< 'n' (th)'em)

LH

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