that needs painted

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:04 PM -0500 2/6/11, Wilson Gray wrote:
>This is also a feature of *Northeast*-Pennsylvania English.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Pennsylvania_English
>
>'With respect to the phenomenon of "positive anymore", Northeast
>Pennsylvania English patterns 'with the Midland rather than the North:
>sentences like "Cars are sure expensive anymore" and "It's 'hard to
>find a job anymore" are grammatical here, but not in the North.[13] A
>similar result is found 'with sentences like "The car needs washed" or
>"The floor needs swept": these are grammatical in 'Northeast
>Pennsylvania as in the Midland, but not in the North.[14]'
>
>After reading the article cited above, Wilson decides to mess with his
>wife, Barbara, a native of Wilkes-Barre, located in the Poconos in
>"NEPA" and the "capital" of the Great Wyoming Valley of the
>Susquehanna River.
>
>W. Cars are sure expensive, anymore.
>B.  I know! Remember? We had to add $2K to the budget in order to
>buy *our* car!
>W. BTW, the car needs washed.
>B.  Yeah, that's true. Eddie [her brother] says that we should have
>had it washed four times, by      now.
>W. It's a good thing that we're retired! It's hard to find a job, anymore.

Actually, "It's easy to find yourself unemployed anymore" would be a
better diagnostic for positive "anymore".  Your statement above is
widely accepted (on grammatical rather than economic grounds) by
speakers outside the relevant variety, given the "hard".   Of course
your first datum is restricted to positive "anymore" speakers in any
case.

LH

>B.  Yes. It's nice for us not to have to worry about that. Only
>actually *having* a job is worse!
>W. Speaking of washing the car, the floor needs swept.
>B. No, it doesn't. A Swiffering will take care of the dust.
>
>Since she's lived about forty years away from "The Valley," these
>localisms no longer occur in my wife's speech. However, she remains
>passively completely unaware of them. I.e., she's aware of them to the
>extent of being able to avoid them automatically in her own speech,
>but she doesn't notice them at all in other people's speech.
>
>(No, I have not revealed to my wife that my end of the conversation
>was hardly spontaneous.)
>
>FWIW, a friend from Erie, PA, first brought "The car needs washed" to
>my attention, ca.1973, though he regarded it as being peculiar to Erie
>and not to NEPA in general. I'm surprised that it's still regarded as
>being peculiar primarily to *Western* PA, more than a quarter-century
>later.
>
>--
>-Wilson
>---

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