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

[Clai Rice]

What's getting my attention is the two different forms of the 2nd person pl possessive. I've been collecting examples of the unmarked "yall" used as possessive, and one of the frequent patterns is to use yall twice close together, once as possessive and once not. These are just a few examples:

Lemme get yall yall bill.
I can't get yall mail for yall...
It's yall fault. If yall weren't so good, the people wouldn't be saying they wanted the choir on Sunday morning.
Where yall get yall gravel from?

These were all Cajun English speakers except for the last, an older AA man. Sometimes both tokens can be possessive, but that is less frequent.

It is much less usual to see the mixed forms. In my notes I have only two:

Yall need to go into each ya room and stay in there til... 
Can I start to take some of yall plates off the table for you? 

Those were both Cajun English speakers, so this new example would be both AA and very clearly two possessives. Wilson has said before that the unmarked possessive form is plenty common in AA speakers, and I have lots of examples, both in this region and more broadly, including forms starting to show up on scripted tv shows. But so far this will be the first with the mixed forms. 

Clai




----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2016 11:38:07 PM
> Subject: Facebookery: "Stay _y'all ass_ on your back!!!"
> 
> From a comment by a black East Texan.
> 
> Is there an equivalent intensifier in standard English? The literal
> 
> "*Stay you on your backs!"
> 
> is no good.
> 
> Just heard: dialogue spoken by a white, female actor in the dramedy, You're
> the Worst:
> 
> "If she leaves him in the morning, _her wishy-washy ass_ will be drawn back
> into the marriage by noon!"
> 
> I guess that that's answer enough for my ass. [A."She's fine, man!" B."Aw,
> you don't nothing about a 'fine woman'!" A."She's so fine that I would suck
> her daddy's dick! Is that fine enough for yo' ass?" - Richard Pryor.]
> There's no equivalent. So, it's just culturally appropriated. 😜
> 
> --
> -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
> 

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