bare possessive yall

[Clai Rice]

Thank you, Wilson. I will take your suggestion and tune in to some of these shows. Be interesting to see how the closed captioners handle this one.

As far as possessive -s not existing at all, what about the independent possessives "mines" and "hers"? Or possibly "its"?

Clai

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 3:01:34 AM
> Subject: Re: bare possessive yall
> Watch any TV show with random, ordinary, black people on it, e.g.
> Maury,
> Springer, Judge Greg Mathis, The Boondocks, and you can hear this
> _y'all_
> with your own ears. It's not "used sometimes" in BE. Rather, it's an
> absolute feature, like universal negation - "How come *we* didn't
> think to
> bring no gun?" and the well-known "Can't no cat get into no coop."
> Indeed,
> possessive _s_ doesn't exist at all, except among us boojies speaking
> under circumstances in which we might be overheard by white people
> that we
> need to impress with our articulateness.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 7:05 PM, Clai Rice <cxr1086 at louisiana.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: Clai Rice <cxr1086 at LOUISIANA.EDU>
> > Subject: bare possessive yall
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I am currently in the process of documenting that Cajuns often use
> > the
> > unmarked form of yall as possessive: "I'll leave this on the table
> > so yall
> > can sign yall names" or "How was yall weather up there?"
> >
> > My instinct tells me this is used sometimes in AAVE, but so far the
> > only
> > mention of it I have been able to find is in Wolfram's Urban AAVE
> > article
> > in Handbook of Varieties of English (Schneider and Kortmann 2004).
> > There
> > he gives the example of "It's y'all ball", but doesn't include it in
> > the
> > discussion on possessives. Can anyone point me to other mentions or
> > discussions of this form, or any data where I might be able to find
> > it?
> > Transcript data would be the best, but anything including personal
> > observations would be useful. The number of articles and books on
> > AAVE
> > where I have not found it is becoming very long.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > Clai Rice
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain

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