which we're going to get through this

[Jonathan Lighter]

I can hardly believe that the records on this are so scanty.

The construction may well be regional.  Despite Woody Allen,  I never
noticed it in NYC speech.

Bret Harte seems to use it  in his poem "Plain Language from Truthful James"
(1870).   He was imitating a California gambler's speech, but they came from
all over.

JL


On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: which we're going to get through this
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jun 4, 2009, at 6:38 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
> > Herb wrote, " I don't remember hearing it used much by college
> > educated
> > speakers.  The social contexts have been working class."
> >
> > "Working class" may be correct, but I can't count the times I've
> > read this
> > construction on freshman themes since the '70s. And in speech, of
> > course, it
> > remains common.
> >
> > OTOH, conjunctive "which" in my experience means "and," though
> > Herb's ex.
> > sounds more like "but."  That would be new to me.
> >
> > Arnold undoubtedly knows of some analytical articles.
>
> i wish i did.  in fact, i've asked about literature on the subject
> several times here on ADS-L!
>
> at the moment i have only two examples in my collection, but then i
> came to collecting odd relative clauses only recently, and my
> attention has mostly been focused on relatives with resumptive
> pronouns in them and on "characterizing" restrictive relatives.
>
> reported on sci.lang 1/25/07:
>   Imus : Actually I drank some green Bigalow tea, which I was
> surprised at how good it was.
>
> Woody Allen, “Tails of Manhattan”, New Yorker 3/30/09, p. 29:
>    “Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the
> man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot
> if you’re not watching.”
>
> arnold
>
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