[Ads-l] Sentence-final though / tho / doe

Neal Whitman nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Thu Nov 6 12:23:05 UTC 2014


One difference: sentence-final "but" connects the uttered thought with a later one that's left unexpressed, but sentence-final "though" connects it with whatever was said previously.

This reminds me that I've also seen a lot of sentence-final "so", with an unexpressed obvious consequence, like "and that's why I didn't do what I mentioned earlier." For example, "I was going to wash the car but it rained so."

Neal 

> On Nov 5, 2014, at 9:11 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Sentence-final though / tho / doe
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>> On Nov 4, 2014, at 7:42 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
>> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header =
> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
>> Subject:      Sentence-final though / tho / doe
>> =
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> -----
>> =20
>> Anyone have anything to say about sentence-final "though / tho / doe"?=20=
> 
>> I've heard it from my son and his peers, and seen it on some internet=20=
> 
>> memes. On the surface, it's nothing more than the ordinary=20
>> sentence-final "though", but its (possibly over-perceived) frequency,=20=
> 
>> and presence in a very informal register, often in AAE-influenced=20
>> language (as indicated by the "doe" spelling) make me think there's =
> more=20
>> to the story. Below are a lot of Urban Dictionary entries I've =
> collected=20
>> for it....
> 
> not in my files.  vaguely reminiscent of a discussion of sentence-final =
> but/so/then initiated on the newsgroup sci.lang in 2006 by a poster =
> using the name sylh (then at smhttiki at hotmail.com ), with examples from =
> Scottish, NZ, and Australian English (to which one poster added Hawaiian =
> Pidgin).
> 
> arnold
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list