A new one on me y'all guys

Alice Faber faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU
Wed Oct 3 15:53:56 UTC 2012


On 10/3/12 11:47 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> On Oct 3, 2012, at 8:04 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>
>> On 10/3/12 11:00 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>>> On Oct 3, 2012, at 6:44 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>>>
>>>> Never have I heard "y'all guys."
>>>
>>> [AZ] following up on Alice Faber ... (with Alice saying it was new for her).
>>
>> [AF] I was so startled by it, it didn't even occur to me to google.
>
>>> [AZ] it would in fact be astonishing if the variant didn't occur with some frequency, given the frequency of vernacular 2pl "you guys" (especially in vocatives) and the use of y'all for 2pl in the South etc.
>>>
>>
>> [AF] It "felt" like a token-for-token replacement for "youse" in "youse
>> guys", but that's my NY area bias talking (misleading me?)
>
> more neutrally: "y'all guys" plays the same role for some Southerners (etc.) as "youse guys" does for NYers (etc.) -- and as "yinz guys" does for Picksboigers.
>

And that says something--I'm not sure what--about the lexical status of
"guy" and "guys" as some kind of pro-forms.

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