This week / Next Week, Anymore <-> Nowadays

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:37 AM -0700 7/30/09, Guy Letourneau wrote:
>I am in my mid-40s, grew up in New England, and use 'this week' and
>'next' week to cover a two-week span of the future.
>
>I live in Oregon now but spent 3yrs in the 1990s in Indiana, which was
>the first time I noticed someone beginning a clause or sentence with
>'anymore,' where my mind would have used 'nowadays.'
>
>Personally I use 'anymore' at the end of a clause whan I am describing a
>condition which prevailed or obtained in the past but is no longer current:
>
>"You can't get chlordane at the hardware store anymore. Nowadays the
>damn greenie-weenies have banned all the good stuff that used to work.
>You can't get your shirts white anymore, they lowered the phosphates too
>much. Luckily I bought about 50 pounds of trisodium phosphate to add
>that back in, a teaspoon per wash load, but nowadays its even getting
>hard to get real TSP - they try to fob you off with sodium bicarbonate."
>
Note that there are two variables involved here.  One is that
"anymore" for those in your dialect is a negative polarity item,
essentially like "ever", "lift a finger", "yet", and "budge".  This
doesn't mean that it can only occur after a negation, but some
licensing element in the family including negation must be present.
(Depending on the "negative polarity item" in question, that licenser
might be syntactic or lexical negation, inherent negation, questions,
if-clauses, and so on.)  So I'd predict you couldn't say "You can get
chlordane at the hardware store anymore".  In other words, it's not
simply a question of the "anymore" fronting to the beginning of the
sentence, although that's possible only for those outside the
restricted dialect.  For such speakers (by no means limited to the
midwest, although that's the area you're most likely to encounter
them), "anymore" is a lot like "nowadays", except that it can be used
when the change of circumstances in question covers a shorter space
of time ("I started out getting great hands a few hours ago, but
anymore/#nowadays my cards have been shitty").

If you search the ADS-L archives, you'll find a lot of threads on
positive "anymore", along with references to articles on the nature
and distribution of the construction.  (One point raised in those
threads is the possible association with U.K. dialects, including
Scots-Irish, but D. H. Lawrence also has Birkin say in _Women in
Love_ "Suffering bores me any more".  Fronting would be possible here
for many positive "anymore" speakers:  "Anymore, suffering bores me."
The OED entry, under "more", is also useful, but a bit misleading.

LH

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