"I'm gonna buy me a dog"

[Suzette Haden Elgin]

September 26, 2004

Wolfgang Schulze wrote:
>Dear friends,
>
>I do not want to come back to my lasting posting on the 'me' issue, but
>please allow me to simply express my curiosity that arose because of the
>following two wordings:
>
>Suzette Haden Elgin wrote:
>
>>>I hesitate to get into this, given the current climate and (...)
>>>
>Alexander Gross wrote:
>
>>Don't worry about the "current climate," Suzette.
>>
>Since these phrases had been uttered 'in public', I dare to ask which
>climate both Suzette and Alexander are alluding to. Maybe that I appear
>as a real nosy-parker, but I can't help! Forgive me!
>
>Very best wishes,
>Wolfgang
>Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze

**I'm sorry, Dr. Schulze (and all of you on FunkNet). It wasn't my
intention to be obscure, and I had nothing particularly interesting in
mind.

What I meant by "the current climate" is all the cautionary carrying-on
about using one's personal intuitions as grammatical judgments. I
understand the objections and agree that such judgments are often suspect,
and I was therefore hesitant to add my own to the "get me a dog"
discussion. However, there are so few Ozark English native speakers in the
population of linguists that I decided I'd better speak up anyway.

It may be that Alexander meant something else; I'll leave that to him to
explain.

Best wishes,

Suzette

Suzette Haden Elgin
Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS)
PO Box 1137
Huntsville, AR 72740-1137
ocls at madisoncounty.net
http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ozarque