Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 10:47:06 CST From: Dennis Baron Subject: Re: y'all singular, not! In Message Mon, 24 Jan 1994 10:17:02 -0500, "William A. Kretzschmar, Jr." writes: >Not not! > >I, too, had been laboring under the impression that y'all was plural, >never having heard an undeniable counterexample (my wife says she hears >such examples all the time in the hospitals she works in, but that is >still anecdotal evidence even if I consider it reliable). > >Now all is changed. My dept. head, a native of College Park, GA, with >Ph.D. from U of South Carolina, used "y'all" to me in reference to a >personnel matter where I personally was the only subject. > >Hallelujah, I'm now a true believer in the singularity (possible, at >least) of y'all. > >****************************************************************************** >Bill Kretzschmar Phone: 706-542-2246 >Dept. of English FAX: 706-542-2181 >University of Georgia Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hyde.park.uga.edu >Athens, GA 30602-6205 Bitnet: wakjengl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga Bill, Surely Hugh was just being polite, referring to you and anyone like you who might have a similar personnel issue to discuss, or perhaps he was referring to you and your family, or to you and the rest of the faculty who are plaguing him with personnel matters when he'd rather be sipping mint juleps, or perhaps he assumes you have a multiple personality (we used to call it code switching). But we all know that singular y'all is a Yankee myth concocted by sociolinguists to discredit atlas workers. As they say in New Hampshire, live free or die. Cheers. Dennis -- debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392 \'\ fax: 217-333-4321 Dennis Baron \'\ ____________ Department of English / '| ()___________) University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \ 608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \ Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\ (__) ()___________)