required plural marking in 2PP

[Benjamin Barrett]

Could they have wondered whether they had to do their homework in the classroom?

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Jul 7, 2012, at 11:56 PM, Michael Newman wrote:

> Once when I was teaching in high school in NYC, I left a class befuddled =
> during a rant about their not turning in their homework. I had said =
> something along the lines of, "you have to do your homework in this =
> class." They just looked confused and one asked me who I meant. I =
> figured that the problem was that I had said the bare "you," which they =
> interpreted as strictly singular. To be understood I should have said =
> "you guys." Now the class was virtually all Latino and Black, (mix of =
> 2nd generation Jamaican American and African American). Spanish has a =
> clean division of labor between singular and plural forms, but is anyone =
> aware of this phenomenon in AAE or Jamaican? They mostly used a reduced =
> form of you all (with /l/ typically vocalized), but the relevant point =
> for me is not the form but the requirement for plural marking.=20
>
>
> This is the next logical step in the evolution of the English pronoun =
> system to the extent that such steps can be described as logical.=20

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