A new one on me y'all guys

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Garson O'Toole wrote:
>> Below are excerpts from a book dated 1934 that contains multiple
>> instances of "ya all" and "ya'll" ...

 Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> thanks for digging these up, Garson.  i didn't bisbelieve the
> Wikipedia claims -- just wanted to see some supporting data,
> which you've been supplying.

Yes, the hypothesis that "ya'll" was constructed by a contraction of
"ya all" was intriguing. Great thanks for pointing it out, Arnold. I
was just trying to locate some evidence that might support it.

Also, after I posted the first message with the phrase "close
proximity" I came across the following webpage based on the book
"Common Errors in English Usage":

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/close.html

[Begin excerpt]
CLOSE PROXIMITY
CLOSE, IN PROXIMITY TO
A redundancy: “in proximity to” means “close to.”
[End excerpt]

To cover up the horrible gaffe I needed to use the phrase "distant
proximity". HathiTrust allows one to find matches that are distant. So
"ya all" is on page 74, and "y'all' is on page 271 in "Here are my
people".

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