Your mam told my aunt told me

[Georgia]

There are a lot of US dialects where there-constructions like 3) are just
fine in a colloquial register. Also pronounless relatives with indefinite
subjects:
    (4) The man/Anyone wants to marry my daughter had better know
    how to skin and stew a squirrel.

(Anyone that wants to can think up a more PC example.)

Georgia

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick Hudson" <dick at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk>
To: "HPSG" <hpsg-l at lists.Stanford.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 1:13 PM
Subject: Your mam told my aunt told me


> Tibor thinks this is American:
> (1) Your mam told my aunt told me
> Georgia denies all knowledge. I wonder if it's English-wide non-standard,
> where subject relatives are allowed to have zero relative pronoun; i.e.
> it's structurally like (2).
> (2) Your mam told my aunt who told me
> This pattern is almost possible in UK standard in existentials:
> (3) There's a man outside wants to see you.
>
> Dick
>
> Richard (= Dick) Hudson
>
> Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London,
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