If you be good...

[E. O. Batchelder]

Dear Paula:

Just for the record, I posed the question.  I am a native English speaker,
and am doing research in Japan.  A graduate student in linguistics here,
who is a native Japanese speaker, comes to me for native-speaker judgments,
and presented the sentence in question.  I remembered this (as a
collocation/idiom) from my childhood.

I don't think it's a question of dialect, since I don't think anybody
believes these are particularly productive.  Just a frozen corner of
English that some of us have, and it's not clear whether this is a function
of area, or age, or neither, or both!

I received opinions on this matter from 16 people -- thanks very much, all!
-- and forwarded them to the graduate student.  I hope he'll have a summary
forthcoming at some point.

Thanks,
Eleanor


--
Eleanor Olds Batchelder, Ph. D.
Institute of Psychology, University of Tsukuba
http://www.human.tsukuba.ac.jp/~eleanorb
[an alternate email address is: eleanor at abacus.hunter.cuny.edu]
voice:  0298-53-7376
Mail address:  Azuma 4-16-4-401
               Tsukuba, Ibaraki, JAPAN 305-0031

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