[Ads-l] Facebookery: "Stay _y'all ass_ on your back!!!"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Nov 24 04:28:25 UTC 2016


On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Not in what would be considered "standard English", but in other varieties
> as an intransitive counterpart of the personal dative we've discussed in
> various threads, a natural construction in Black and/or Southern and
> Appalachian varieties ("She needs her a new pick-up truck", "(You should)
> get you a laser printer", "Don't you love you any man."
>

"All that's good," to use a blast from the past, but your ass has no
equivalent outside of BE for the highlighted phrase in

"If she leaves him in the morning, _her [wishy-washy] ass_ will be drawn
back into the marriage by noon!"

I'm struck by a thought. Maybe _self_ is the standard equivalent:

"If she leaves him in the morning, _her [wishy-washy] self_ will be drawn
back into the marriage by noon!"

That works for me only just in case that "wishy-washy" is present.

"Stay yourselves on your backs!"

That's out on the bleeding edge. I'd probably give it a straight-up fail,
if I hadn't had a few hours to become accustomed to it.

Oh, well.

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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