[Lingtyp] query: 1st syllable deletion

[John DuBois]

Hi David,
Jespersen got there first -- he called it prosiopesis.
As for the initial  "the fuck" construction you saw in a movie, there's a
series called The Deuce that has this construction constantly. (Great show,
by the way.) But it didn't sound like anything I'd heard, which left me 2
mulling possibilities:
(1) There's an authentic dialect of NYC American English I don't know, or
(2) The writers encountered the construction, "The fuck you are!", and
over-generalized it in a questionable direction (dialectologically
speaking).
It would be cool if (1) was true, but I'd want to hear what those in the
know have to say.
Best,
Jack

==============================
John W. Du Bois
Professor of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California 93106
USA
dubois at ucsb.edu

On Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 3:11 PM David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>
>
> English seems to have  a rule which, under particular conditions, allows
> for the first syllable of an utterance to be deleted.  The first example
> below is from a movie that I saw last night, the next two are made up:
>
>
>
> (1) (What) The fuck happened to you?
>
> (2) (Are) You going home yet?
>
> (3) (I) Think it's gonna rain
>
>
>
> And there's also the formulaic "Wish you were here".
>
>
>
> My questions:
>
>
>
> 1. Has anybody written about this? Seems like it could be interesting  for
> a number of reasons.
>
>
>
> 2. Are there similar phenomena in other languages? (Haven't seen anything
> like it in the other languages I happen to be familiar with.)
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> David
>
> --
> David Gil
>
> Senior Scientist (Associate)
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302
>
>
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