which we're going to get through this

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jun 4, 2009, at 7:45 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> 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.

hard to know.  i've suspected that many examples might just have been
seen as inadvertent errors (and some of them might be) and so
disregarded.

jon and i noticed examples in student writing simply because part of
our job was to attend to the details of this writing.  others might
not have been so attentive.

(but i've been away from heavy exposure to undergraduate writing for
some years, and i wasn't collecting such examples then.)

still, it would be good to have at least some more data.

my recollection of these examples is that people are using "which" to
introduce an addition to the main clause -- perhaps because they've
been taught not to use "and" so much and so go for something more
weighty and serious.

arnold

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