Heard on "Jerry": "VP (PREP) _me/you/him_ NP"

[Amy West]

On 2/10/11 12:05 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

>"A few weeks later [i.e. after he had left her], I got _me_ a
 >surprise_: my wife was pregnant with our third child!"


 >I've never been able to do more than to know intuitively how to use
 >this construction. I've heard it used by my fellow blacks and by
 >Southern whites all of my life. Yet, it remains a mystery to me, to
 >the extent that certain examples have stuck in my memory since
 >forever.

 >1) I _got me a eighteen-year-old jitterbug_.
 >2a) I'm just sitting here, _eating me some potato chips_.
 >2b) I'm just sitting here, _eating on me a hamburger_.
 >3) _Get you a tray_!


>Well, I've never been a syntactician. What do I know?

I've never been one either. But that doesn't stop me from shooting off
my ill-informed mouth.

But isn't there a parallel pattern in modern standard German, where if
the indirect object is a pronoun, it comes before the direct object noun
phrase?

Of the examples that you gave the one that strikes me as the odd one
out, as the awkward one is the the "eating on me a hamburger", and it's
because of the inclusion of the prep. To my ear it should be either
"eating me a hamburger" or "eating on a hamburger."

--
---Amy West

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