End of ADS-L Digest - 24 Jul 1997 to 25 Jul 1997
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Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
Topics of the day:

 1. "is is" (2)
 2. boro-talk?
 3. HELP (2)

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Date:  Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:37:21 -0400
From:  Ron Butters <RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM>
Subject: "is is"

As I recall, this construction has been discussed here before. What my
 memory also is is that several years ago in AMERICAN SPEECH someone (Jim
Hartman?) published something on how this pleonastic (?) IS may have evolved
from the long-grammatical "is is" of cleft sentences (e.g., in the opening
words of this sentence).

Can anyone help us out with a bibliography of this putatively new
construction?