[Lexicog] Meaning of "cotton-picking"

[Benjamin Barrett]

Quoting Ron Butters from the American Dialect Society list

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0105D&L=ads-l&P=R252

FRED: So all the time I was cutting the grass I kept thinking about how
great
it would be to get high. And wouldn't you know it, just as I was finishing
the job one of my old running buddies pulled up in his car and immediately
started talking about how HE had a new supply of great drugs and how I
should
come off with HIM and get high. I told HIM I wasn't interested, that I was
not going to do any drugs, not today. Well, HE got right ugly, so I said,
"Y'ALL get in Y'ALL'S car and get out of here." And THEY left.

If one is looking for evidence for putative singular Y'ALL, it is hard to
find better data than this. Granted, one must explain away the third-person
plural THEY in the final sentence as an instance of the impersonal singular
THEY (cf. EVERYONE LIKES PIZZA, DON'T THEY?). However, the evidence of the
immediately antecedent singular masculine HE/HIM appears to argue
overwhelming that Y'ALL is here being used as a singular.

Benjamin Barrett
Baking the World a Better Place
www.hiroki.us


________________________________

	From: Rudolph C Troike [mailto:rtroike at u.arizona.edu]
	Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 8:19 PM
	To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
	Subject: [Lexicog] Meaning of "cotton-picking"
	
	My Alabama consultant suggests that this is part of a deliberate
Northern
	plot, or sheer ignorance, as in the stereotypical assumption that
	"you-all" is used to refer to one person. Obviously more research is
	needed before banning the expression.




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