End of ADS-L Digest - 23 Jan 1994 to 24 Jan 1994

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There are 6 messages totalling 146 lines in this issue.



Topics of the day:



 1. y'all singular, not! (2)

 2. Tamony lecture April 21

 3. y'all

 4. need some information

 5. AWAKE! Etc.



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Date:  Mon, 24 Jan 1994 22:29:32 -0700

From:  Rudy Troike <RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ARIZVMS.BITNET>

Subject: Re: y'all singular, not!



Bill, et al.:

    The experience with Bill's Chair (and as a "Head", no "Chairs" being

hereabouts, I can affirm that even such august personages are not immune to

unique grammars or misspeakings), and his wife with staff (? or patients)

in the hospital o

and Beth's (I think) report of the coffee-server using <y'all> with evident

singularity (the occasion not permitting intrusion into their mental processes)

suggests, as I have been discussing with Don Lance, that there may be an

emerging pattern of evidence for a "polite" <y'all> usage, perhaps parallel

to caregiver use of <we> for <you> (sg.), and inversely parallel to the

polite use of <myself> now confounding GB grammarians. The service contexts

and the power differential perceived between Bill and his Chair suggest some

of the same impulses which produced <you> ---> <we> and probably earlier

contributed to <thou> ---> <you>. Since evidence in other cases makes it

clear that the "politeness" impulse can independently produce parallel results,

it should not be surprising that originally plural <y'all> (arising from the

standard British distributive "you all", which I have heard even from Prime

Ministers -- and remember, if the <thou>/<you> distinction had not broken down

there would never have been a need for a new plural in the first place)

was being used independently as a polite form. Remember, you heard it here

first!

    So far, though, I have not heard anyone arguing that <we> is not

REALLY first person plural because certain English speakers have been

discovered using it in direct reference to an addressee as second person

singular.

            Rudy