[Ads-l] Is this what it seems?

[Jonathan Lighter]

I take it to be "it's" substituting for "there's" - heard daily in
Southern-origin speech.

JL

On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Is this what it seems?
>
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>
> I take it to be a copula-less cleft construction: "It's only women
> [that/who are] in the shop."
>
> Neal
>
> On 8/7/2015 11:01 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Is this what it seems?
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > "Valentine=E2=80=99s Day is one of the few times of the year when most
> China Star
> > customers are male. Usually,_it's_ only women in the shop..."
> >
> > http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/learning-to-speak-lingerie
> >
> >
> > Not "... there are/there're/there is/there's only women ..."?
> >
> > --
> > -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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