Bogoyvalenskiy, D

[Lise Menn]

Dear colleagues
I suggest that the fact that we have no real way to test any of these
claims points up serious limitations to the whole notion of
'part-of-speech'. Which is not exactly a new observation...
	Lise Menn

At 5:18 PM +0100 8/14/01, Jon Machtynger wrote:
>> The adverbial use of "good" in the States may have begun as a dialect
>> variant, but it is now simply idiomatic in certain phrases:  "You did
>> good," and after "How are you?" "I'm good, how are you?"  But hasn't the
>> same change occurred with German "gut"?  Isn't "wohl" reserved mainly for
>> idioms like "Leb wohl"?  Such regularization is not unusual; adverbial -ly
>> is also falling away in many dialects:  "Go slow," "Do you say this
>>different?"
>
>I don't think that "you did good" uses good as an adverb, rather a noun, as
>in "let's do some good".  The fact that people may consider this in an
>adverbial sense is probably a misunderstanding.
>
>Also from a German perspective, I think the context is understood to the
>native speaker.  I'm no native speaker, but I believe that answering 'gut'
>would be implicitly considered "mir geht's gut" (i.e. goes well with me).
>
>Wohl would be different from gut (just as well is different from good)
>e.g. ich
>fuhle mich wohl.
>
>Jon
>
>> >At 18:06 13.08.2001 +0100, you wrote:
>> > >Don't Americans say "I did good" - I hear them say in response to
>> > >"how are you"  = "Good" and it is creeping into British english too,
>> > >replacing "well".  I've heard anecodatlly bestest, betterest amd
>> > >gooder but never goodest..
>> > >Annette
>> > >
>> >
>> >Thank you for this -- I never heard that. This might make it more plausible
>> >that those using "I did better" are somehow aware of the relationship to "I
>> >did good".
>> >Of course, understanding "well" really well involves understanding the
>> >relationship of the adverb to the adjective. Could it be that the
>> >increasing usage of the adjective rather than the adverb is due to a
>> >certain uneasiness with this irregularity? Maybe, for speakers, "well" is
>> >somehow too remote from "good" to be used with the same ease (in contexts
>> >where something "good" is to be expressed), so they increasingly prefer
>> >"good"?! (I'm not too familiar with the mechanisms of language change --
>> >I'm just speculating!)
>> >- Thora
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >http://www.spatial-cognition.de
>> >
>> >
>> >---------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >Thora Tenbrink
>> >Spatial Cognition Priority Program & WSV
>> >Universitaet Hamburg
>> >FB Informatik
>> >Vogt-Koelln-Str. 30
>> >D-22527 Hamburg
>> >
>> >Tel.: +49/*40/42883-2382
>> >Fax:  +49/*40/42883-2385
>> >e-mail: tenbrink at informatik.uni-hamburg.de
>> >http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WSV/hp/tenbrink-english.htm
>>
>>
>> _____________________________________________
>> Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
>> Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
>> Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
>> http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm
>>



Beware Procrustes bearing Occam's razor.

	Lise Menn 			office phone 303-492-1609
	Professor			home fax     303-413-0017
	Department of Linguistics
	UCB 295
	University of Colorado
	Boulder, CO 80309-0295

Lise Menn's home page
http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/lmenn/

"Shirley Says: Living with Aphasia"
http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/Shirley4.pdf