"up and ____"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/5/2011 12:53 PM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>I'm thinking of the line from the ballad of "Sir Patrick Spens" as
>it appeared in Percy's _Reliques_, 1765:  "Up and spak an eldern
>knicht."  Can't the "up" function simply as an ellipsis of "get/got
>up"--reduced to its unflectable part?  That's how I would regard
>present-day "up and ___" constructions (which I commonly use, but I
>could never inflect the "up"!).
>
>--Charlie

Up and at 'em, Atom Ant.

Joel


>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>Arnold Zwicky [zwicky at STANFORD.EDU]
>Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 11:57 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>On Oct 4, 2011, at 6:56 AM, Charlie Doyle wrote:
>
> > Looking at Google books, I found the (unrelated but interesting)
> double-inflected phrase "upping and leaving."
>
>double inflection is the standard here; the construction is a
>coordination (with "up" functioning as a verb), so parallel
>inflection on the conjuncts is what you'd expect.
>
>MWDEU under _up_ (p. 931)
>
>   2. Some usage books and schoolbooks view the phrase _up and_ with
> the same distaste they direct at _take and_, _go and_, and _try
> and_ ... _Up and_ is no bucolic idiom redolent of our frontier
> past, however; it is current on both sides of the Atlantic, and is
> used in general publications, often by writers of more than
> ordinary sophistication. It ... is not highly formal.
>
>[exx with: upped and Vpst, up and Vprs, upped and Vpst, up and Vbse]
>
>OED2 under _up_ v.:
>
>   6. b. colloq. and dial. To start up, come forward, begin abruptly
> or boldly, to say or do something. Usu. followed by _and_. [cites
> from mid-19th c. on; *all* exx with parallel inflection in conjuncts]
>
>an example i collected from the Economist:
>
>   These [European masterpieces of art] have been drip-fed into the
> market ever since, keeping the experts and the point of sale in London.
>             But markets, as auction houses and gallery owners like
> to point out, can up and leave.  Paris's share of the modern-art
> market has shrivelled since the 1960s.
>   ("Suite Anglaise", story in the Economist, 6/24/06, p. 65)
>
>it looks like "up and left" etc. ("My babyfather has up and left my
>[5-month-old] daughter") is the innovation, but it's pretty widespread.
>
>(surely someone has looked at the construction.)
>
>arnold
>
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