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

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Guess I'll go tune me a piano

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 10, 2011, at 11:11 AM, Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM> wrote:

> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org