[Ads-l] Antedating of "uh-huh"

[Wilson Gray]

> “no you di?int”

It still lives, being a feature of some varieties of BE, though its
speakers may deny it: "I don't use no glo?al stop!" as a friend from Fuquay
Springs, North Carolina, has been claiming since we met in 1961.

Speaking of this sort of thing, is anyone else familiar with "?op-?op"
low-high. It means something along the lines of Don't try it! Don't you
dare (touch it)! et sim.

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 9:10 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> We had a couple of threads on these back aways (2003, 2004, 2005). Besides
> “uh-oh” and “uh-uh”, there’s the closed mouth version, however it’s
> transcribed.  “m-hm” with no glottal stop (like the open-mouth version
> “uh-huh”) vs. “m?m” with glottal stop, like the open-mouth “uh-uh”.  And
> then there’s “nuh-uh”, with the same glottal stop--and the same high-low
> tonal pattern as found also in “uh-oh”, as opposed to the low-high of the
> positive versions. I’ve tried pursuing the idea that the glottal stop,
> interrupting the airflow, is an iconic representation of negation (there’s
> also “no you di?int” which had it’s 15 minutes, or maybe 15 months, of fame
> a while back), did I convince anyone?  Nuh-uh.
>
> LH
>
> > On Nov 18, 2018, at 10:44 AM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 12:06:29 Zone-0500  Herb Stahlke <
> hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> >> In Nigeria in the Peace Corps in 1963 we had to learn that "eh heh" (low
> >> tone-high tone) meant "no" and " en" (low tone nasalized) meant "yes".
> >
> > Was there a glottal stop between "eh" and "heh"?  I have been wondering
> if the two words
> > in English with a glottal stop ("uh-oh" and the negative "uh-uh") were
> brought to the US
> > by slaves from Africa (many of whom came from in or near Nigeria) and
> somehow made the
> > transition to general usage.
> >
> > - Jim Landau
> >
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-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
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-Mark Twain

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