Query

[Francis Hult]

It may be helpful to search in MICASE too.  It's a handy online corpus of spoken English in university settings:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micase/
 
FMH
 
--
Francis M. Hult, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies
University of Texas at San Antonio
 
Web: http://faculty.coehd.utsa.edu/fhult/

________________________________

From: Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group on behalf of Ellen Contini-Morava
Sent: Sat 8/30/2008 7:22 AM
To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: [LINGANTH] Query



I agree that this question needs context and that there's a difference
in nuance.  I would suggest doing a google search on "all of them" vs.
"them all" and see how they're actually used.

Ellen

Val Pagliai Nesti wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am not sure about being colloquial, and I would need some context to decide, but the shade of meaning seems different.
> For example, let's say I am talking about killing roaches in my apartment.
>
> "We killed all of them" sounds more like something I would use to make a report.
> "We killed them all" sounds more self-complacent.
>
> Then, again, much depends on the paralanguage etc.
>
> This anyway is my opinion, but I am not a native speaker of English.
>
> Best,
>
> Valentina Pagliai
> UCLA
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Robert Lawless <robert.lawless at WICHITA.EDU>
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 5:38:55 PM
> Subject: [LINGANTH] Query
>
> Which do you consider more colloquial in US speech?
>
> We killed them all.
>
> We killed all of them.
>
>
>
>