"belong to be"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/22/2011 10:05 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>The 1991 film, _Ballad of the Sad Cafe_, based on Carson McCullers' novel,
>is set in 1932 in some especially weird part of rural Georgia, or perhaps in
>a parallel-rural Georgia on Planet X.  Naturally, they talk funny there.
>
>Part of the reason that one of them does is that Vanessa Redgrave can't  get
>her rural-Georgia accent quite right. But never mind that. At one point she
>tells no-good Keith Carradine, "You *belong* to be in the penitentiary!"
>
>He just got out. So the nuance here is "deserve to be."
>
>OED comes close with def. 4c: "With inf.: to be accustomed, ought; to seem,
>intend. _U.S. dial._"  "Ought" isn't quite strong enough here, IMHO.
>
>Part of why I'm posting this is because at first, "belong to be" sounded
>utterly bizarre (Like my first positive "anymore." Ah, youth!)  But within
>seconds, it seemed so familiar that I thought I'd always known it. A minute
>later, it seemed strange again.These were very odd reactions.
>
>Does Vanessa's screen usage seem *perfectly normal* to anybody here?

*Reasonable* to me, although not my first choice when speaking.  Does
the fact that a place (the pen) is named make "belong" more possible?

Joel


>JL
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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