Origins of the Word "Soccer"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 2, 2014, at 10:22 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 5:39 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> A. were he to be asked what was his most pleasant recollection of Oxford
>> life
>> 
> 
> I'm running on memory fumes, as usual, but didn't Labov write that this
> construction of the "embedded question" was peculiar to BE, as opposed to
> the "standard"

Yes he did, and George Lakoff cited the same effect (although limited to embedded questions that are used to indirectly ask questions) for his dialect of (Jewish, Bayonne, NJ) English, citing paradigms like

a.  Tell me where did he go.
b.  I want to know where did he go.
c.  *Bill told me where did he go.
d.  *I know where did he go.
e.   I don't know where did he go.

And in Hispanic English, this kind of inversion appears to be more broadly acceptable, according to Carmen Fought. 

LH
> 
> B. "were he to be asked what his most pleasant recollection of Oxford life
> was"
> 
> FWIW, my impression, based on dekkids of hearing and reading, is that these
> constructions are like "economics" and "(n)either,"
> 
> "You can get with this / Or you can get with that / The choice is yours,"
> 
> as the song goes, regardless of race, etc.. I choose B and "(n)eether." I
> have no personal preference WRT "economics."
> 
> -- 
> -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
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org