Heard on The Judges, etc.

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

This is an interesting example. According to some descriptions, 'steady' is incompatible with stative verbs. In fact Lisa Green gives the example "*They steady having money" as ungrammatical in her book on AAE. The claim is that "steady" describes "an activity [that] is carried out in an intense or consistent manner." It seems, however, that the use of "been" works to make "steady" acceptable here. Green suggests, in reference to the "habitual be" that "They be steady having money" is grammatical b/c the "be" promotes an activity reading. I'm not sure, but I wonder if in the example Wilson cited, the implication is that the boyfriend has been taking her car out regularly rather than it having been in his possession for the duration. Wilson, do you have any intuitions about this?

The word order is also different from other examples in the literature, which have BE steady Ving, but those examples are all of invariant 'be.'

-Matt Gordon
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilson Gray [hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 7:16 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Heard on The Judges, etc.

Twenty-ish, black female speaker:

"My sister boyfriend, who _steady been having_ her car ..."

I.e.,

"... is the person who ordinarily has had her car in his possession ..."

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