Non-Standard conjoined subject noun phrases

[Robin Hamilton]

> (2) To what degree does the occurence of this particular
> form of words serve to link five texts and separate them from fifteen or
> twenty other texts from the same roughly one hundred year period?

I should say that, leaving generally colloquial texts such as the poaching
ballads to one side, in the entire five hundred year stretch of specifically
*cant verse, insofar as I know it, I can't call to mind any other instance
of the "Me and five more" collocation of words.   The closest I can think of
are some locutions used in songs remembered by Thomas Mount when he was
about to be hanged in Rhode Island in 1790, and even there, I couldn't be
entirely specific as to what's making me think there is a link.

Which is why the phrase is (still) itching my brain.

Robin

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