Date:  Wed, 6 Dec 1995 22:31:52 -0500

From:  Jeutonne Brewer <brewerj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NR.INFI.NET>

Subject: receipt



I have heard my mother-in-law use "receipt" for "recipe" many times.

She often self-corrected her "receipt" to "recipe," sometimes immediately,

sometimes in the next sentence or two. In other words she recognized

"recipe" as the newer term. Another use I was fascinated to hear was

"het," as in "I het the water for you."



She lived in Arkansas all her life until she moved to NC to live with my

husband and me after she retired. Now 93 years old, she was in her 60s

when she made this move.



An afterword:

I have found this a strange note to write, one that like many other things

makes English tenses an interesting topic. I was "forced" to shift tense

in the first paragraph because I used to be able to hear her use

many interesting expressions. She is alive but not well and no longer

able to talk to us. I think a fascinating language and discourse topic concerns

what happens when (and if) the elderly lose their linguistic capability? I

just realized as I was writing this note that an equally interesting topic

is what happens in the speech/writing of the researcher who in an

ethnograpic sense shifts in and out of different contexts, time frames, and

linguistic as well as personal relationships. I have written about the first

topic

but not the second topic. Well, I have gotten way off the original topic for

this message.





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* jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hamlet.uncg.edu           *

*   Department of English           *

*   University of North Carolina at Greensboro *

*   Greensboro, NC 17412            *

* brewerj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]iris.uncg.edu             *

* brewerj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]fagan.uncg.edu            *

* brewerj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nr.infi.net              *

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