Heard on The Judges

[Wilson Gray]

Judge Greg:

"What was it that you expected _for_ him to do for you?"


It seems to me that the use of _for_ in this particular syntactic
structure is possibly not common. I can recall that people used this
type of construction when I was a child in Texas. But, IME, it's so
rare enough that I wasn't f'-sho' that my memory of it was real, till
I heard the judge say it, a minute ago.


Forty-ish, black male defendant:

"I seen him flare up his stem"

I.e.

"I saw him lght his crack pipe."


Thirty-ish, African-American plaintiff from Ghana:

"One of the first things that I discovered about myself after coming
to America is that I'm black."


Forty-ish, white male speaker from Milwaukee:

"When I moved out, she _told_ me _says_ I could have all the furniture."


This the the third time - the charm one - that I've heard a Northern
sE-speaker use the "tell-say" construction on some "Judges" show.

Further deponent sayeth not.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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