Make up your mind!

Mon Feb 24 20:29:40 UTC 2014

This just struck me, but could it be that speakers who write 'could of' actually DO know that the syllabic /v/ is an allomorph of 'have' but are under the mistaken (but not as bizarre) belief that 'of' is the correct way to spell 've.

That would make more sense than the assumption that the contrast between an auxiliary and a preposition has neutralized.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 1:41:58 PM
> Subject: Make up your mind!

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Make up your mind!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> "could _of_ and should _have_ been better"

> Or do people interpret "could of" and "should have" as distinct
> syntacto-semantic structures, since the writer presumably wrote what
> he did
> on purpose and not by mistake?

> Youneverknow.
> --
> - 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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