An ad: _baby_ > _it_

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Dec 26 03:53:25 UTC 2012


On Dec 25, 2012, at 3:36 PM, Wilson Gray wrote (inter alia):

>
>
> And check this out. A Tennesseean speaks:
>
> "Supplies are running low, since manufacturers are producing less and
> less of this product, _anymore_."
>
> There's no stopping the change of language.
> --
I'm not sure I see positive "anymore" as a symptom of (current) language change.  What with Birkin's "Suffering bores me any more" (Women in Love, 1920) and the various short (and occasionally not so short) pieces in American Speech from 1931 (Kemp Malone, "_any more_ in the affirmative", Am. Sp. 6: 460) on, it's not exactly an innovation, although its range seems to be growing.

LH

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list