anymore

[Damien Hall]

PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS / PRIÈRE DE NOTER MA NOUVELLE ADRESSE ÉLECTRONIQUE

Can any American linguists comment on a hunch I have that the speaker's mental representation of /EnimOr/ contributes to its positive or negative status?

In BrE, /EnimOr/ (/EnimO:/) is overwhelmingly spelt as two words, 'any more', and this is entirely negative-anymore territory.  In AmE as a whole, obviously both positive and negative anymores are represented, and I believe I'm right in saying that both spellings are also represented, 'anymore' and 'any more'.  It seems to me that positive 'anymore' there is always just that, 'anymore', never 'any more', and that negative 'anymore' can be either.  So, restricting the sampling universe to people who at least sometimes spell /EnimOr/ as two words, can anyone say whether there's a correlation here, whereby the negative sense is more often spelt as one word and the positive sense as two?

Damien

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Damien Hall

University of Kent (UK / Royaume-Uni)
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'
Projet de recherche: 'Vers un Nouvel Atlas Linguistique de la France'

English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages
Section de Langue et Linguistique Anglaises, Faculté de la Culture et des Langues Européennes

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