M. Lynne Murphy 104lyn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]muse.arts.wits.ac.za
Department of Linguistics phone: +27(11)716-2340
University of the Witwatersrand fax: +27(11)716-4199
Johannesburg 2050
SOUTH AFRICA
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:43:38 -0500
From: Margaret Ronkin ronkinm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUSUN.GEORGETOWN.EDU
Subject: no problemo!
Just what I was going to say. The Spanish expression is 'no problema' and
'problema' is a masculine noun. But I'd also assumed that the once
hipspeak 'daddy-o' and 'no problemo' were both Spanglo.
Maggie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~
Maggie Ronkin / Georgetown University / ronkinm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gusun.acc.georgetown.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~
On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
Lynne: but the -o in "no problemo" is a different thing. it's
spanish, which contributes a lot of slang to american english...
alas, no. spanish would be problemA (which is masculine gender,
despite its -a, because it's a greek-derived word in -ma).
"no problemo" is mock-spanish. still probably not the same
thing as "daddy-o" etc., but not spanish.
arnold (zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]csli.stanford.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 16:08:02 EST
From: simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo!
Since I associate "Daddy-o" with whats-his-nose on the show
before Gilligan's Island (sorry, I'm blanking on lots of refs today,)
I've got to ask: Was "Daddy-o" every actually used without
self-consciousness or parody?
(Woulds
n't Daddy-o be slang on slang?)
beth simon
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 16:13:30 EST
From: simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: Re: no problemo!
`No problemo' is faux Spanglish, nu?
beth simon
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 16:36:43 -0600
From: Joan Houston Hall jdhall[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU
Subject: Re: might could
DARE III treats multiple modals at the entry for "may." We leaned heavily
on the work done by Michael Montgomery and Margaret Mishoe, published in
1994 American Speech 69.3-29.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 17:07:51 -0500
From: Peggy Smith dj611[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo!
I am relatively sure that "daddy-o" was used by James Dean, Sal
Mineo, and friends in the 1957 movie, "Rebel Without a Cause", which
would pre-date Maynard G. Krebs in "Dobie Gillis". The movie date might
have been even earlier. My copy of the screenplay is at school. I will
check on Monday.
Peggy Smith
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 10:41:50 -0600
From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: Re: /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply
Professor Daniel Long of Osaka, Japan, wrote to me privately at 20:20:31
+0900 on Sat, 1 Mar 1997
And I'm re-posting to ads-l:
/ha, hi, hu, he, ho/
realized phonetically as:
[ha, ci, fu, he, ho]
where "ci" represents the sound described [in my posting as 'ichlaut'].
(the "fu" is actually
a voiceless bilabial fricative, written with that "PHI" thing) There
is also, incidentally, a loss of contrast between /si/ and /hi/ in Tokyo
where they are more likely to be phonetically (closer to) [ESH i], and
in Osaka where they are closer to [c-cedilla i]. There are jokes about
people from Tokyo saying "hio shi gari" for "shio hi gari" (gathering
shellfish at low tide).
Danny Long (who finally got to answer a question instead of ask one! . .
. But come to think of it, nobody asked. damn.)
Ask a Japanese student to do a little contrastive analysis and these sets
of CV sequences will come tumbling out the first thing. They're very
interesting. The /hu/ gets transliterated as 'fu' in European languages,
as in Mt. Fuji. What's the translation of the other half of the Japanese
joke re /hi/ - /si/?
Danny, I DID indirectly ask you to respond. I hoped you would, because you
know about Japanese.
In the Saar and Lorraine dialects of German, the Ichlaut is pronounced with
the esch consonant and is a feature that is featured in stereotyped
Saarlaendisch.
What can you add about the voiceless vowels that Terry Irons asked about?
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 10:18:31 -0600
From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: Re: hypercorrection
At 12:28 AM 3/1/97 -0600, Donald Lance wrote:
That
is, they're following an "interlanguage" grammar rule (inter - between
standard and student language): "When saying two pronouns or an NP and a
pronoun before any verb, use the 'I' or 'he' form."
At 05:14:40 Sat, 1 Mar 1997 David Johns of Waycross GA wrote:
Actually, it seems to me that the basic rule is "With a sole pronoun, use
the subject form in the subject position; use the object form elsewhere.
When the pronoun is conjoined, do the opposite: use the object form in the
subject position and the subject form in the object position." Interesting
rule. The "hypercorrected" rule then becomes "When the pronoun is
conjoined, always use the subject form." This *simpler* rule results in
more reinforcement from English teachers, maybe because subjects are more
frequent than objects.
Professor Johns has outlined the set of rules that I was in too much of a
hurry to reconstruct. Thanks. May be even more complex than these rules,
however.
Me seemeth the dialect that uses this "between you and I" rule also has
frequent use of deferential reflexives (use of reflexive pronoun in object
position to suggest deference, "As for myself,..."). Implicational
relationships between the two rules (Christian, Wolfram, Dube. Variation
and Change in Geographically Isolated Communities: Appalachian and Ozark
English. PADS 74 (1988) 96-105), however, would be directional. That is,
those who have the "between you and I" rule have a strong tendency (not
100%, but statistically signifiant) to have the deferential reflexivization
rule, but not vice versa. Lots of people use deferential reflexivization
but otherwise have "perfectly normal" pronoun use ("perfectly normal" =
approved by Miss Fidditch). Deferential reflexives are very common in
British English. Miss Fidditch herself might deferentially avoid "I" or
"me" on occasion.
Frequency of subjects vs objects may not be the determining factor. The
"whom ... was" rule doesn't use INfrequency of objects to favor object-case
marking.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 18:33:28 -0600
From: Peter Daniels pdaniels[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PRESS-GOPHER.UCHICAGO.EDU
Subject: Re: indefinite pronouns
No, it's not correct, some people don't like pizza.
(Fieldworkers tell us that informants *always* respond to the content of
the sentence, not the form; likewise also toddlers learning to talk simply
never notice the intent of corrections.)
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 13:13:51 +0900
From: Daniel Long dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]X.AGE.OR.JP
Subject: Re: /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply
Donald M. Lance wrote:
There are jokes about people from Tokyo saying "hio shi gari" for "shio hi gari"
(gathering shellfish at low tide).
What's the translation of the other half of the Japanese joke re /hi/ - /si/?
Actually, the "other half" doesn't really come out as meaning anything.
You might could COME UP with some meanings to match these sounds, but
there's no pat answer to the "joke". (THIS is a grammatically correct
usage of double modals!) So maybe "joke" was too strong a word. It's
more like a stereotypical phrase to poke fun at "downtown" (shitamachi)
Tokyo speakers.
What can you add about the voiceless vowels that Terry Irons asked about?
I certainly agree with the way Terry explained it.
The devoiced vowels ARE definitely vowels. Look at the example with
*ki*. You can definitely tell that speakers are saying /ki/ and not
/ku/, so it is not a case of the vowel being dropped. If this is hard
to imagine, then just WHISPER the syllables "ki" and "ku" to yourself.
Hear the difference? You just made devoiced vowels! That vowel
devoicing in CVC sequences differs from consonant clusters has already
been mentioned. The fact that (many dialects of) Japanese perceive
phonological units as morae rather than syllables is significant. Thus
*s'ki* 'liking something' is pronounced and perceived as two
equally-long time units; different from English "ski".
From a DIALECTOLOGSIST'S standpoint, there is a lot of interesting
regional variation here. Vowel devoicing basically only occurs with the
two high vowels (devoicing of other vowels is reported, but is very
rare; limited to certain lexical items in certain dialects), when
sandwiched between voiceless consonants. It's more noticeable in some
dialects (like Tokyo) than in others (like Kyoto). In most dialects,
(exceptions on Noto Peninsula, etc.) devoicing is limited to every OTHER
syllable, so you get *k'shi sh'ki k'ki* 'a Kishi-type machine'. It's
related to the pitch accent of words (which itself differs greatly among
regional dialects). . .
DInnIs had a grad student working on this, I believe. Where is she?
Where is DInnIs? Thanks to Donald Lance for reposting my letter. I
called myself posting it to the list, but I guess I hit the wrong button
somewhere.
Danny Long
(Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor
Japanese Language Research Center
Osaka Shoin Women's College
4-2-26 Hishiyanishi
Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577
tel and fax +81-6-729-1831
email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp
http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 28 Feb 1997 to 1 Mar 1997
***********************************************
Subject: ADS-L Digest - 1 Mar 1997 to 2 Mar 1997
There are 10 messages totalling 325 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. No problemo, daddy-o
2. No problemo!
3. More Naples, more pizza
4. "See Naples and Die"
5. No problemo isn't fully Spanish
6. Everybody uses tag questions, don't we?
7. NPR newscast (2)
8. Ebonics: Yet another last word
9. I've done my best to read the table Donald M. Lance posted,
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 22:55:39 -0800
From: "Thomas L. Clark" tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NEVADA.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo, daddy-o
On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Ron Butters wrote:
Whatever the -o ending is doing today, it has been around for a long time. In
the late 1960s one of my older colleagues (then in her 60s) addressed me as
"dear-o"; "Daddy-o" was a popular slang term of address in the 1950s.
Here in the Spanish-tempered Southwest, nearly all anglos (according to
the Nevada Language Survey) say "no problema." Those we might consider
unregenerate rednecks who do these things simply because the things ARE
irritating, are apt to say "no problemo," as well as transforming the
initial vowel in "adios" to asc, and stressing it.
Those of hispanic persuasion tend to say "no provlem." The /v/ is a very
slight labiodental fricative. And the "o" is /o/.
As Ron says, in the '50s "daddy-o" was so common that I can attest to its
being common to teenagers of the time (1954) as "dude" five years ago. I
was trying to learn a folk song (I think Irish) on my GIT-tar. I called
the song "Whiskey in a Jar," though I don't think that is the title.
At any rate, I learned the line "what-ho, the daddy-o, there's whiskey in the jar."
All my hip (or was it hep) friends concurred with what we were hearing on
the 45 rpm record (lo-fi).
Cheers,
tlc
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 09:28:29 -0400
From: "Dennis R. Preston" preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo!
Alas, Tom Clark is right. Us old-timers can remember a non-tongue-in-cheek
'daddy-o' from before even James Dean.
Arnold is also correct to point out that 'problemo' is 'mock' Spanish
(since it incorrectly marks the gender), but I am surprised no responses to
this original query have mentioned Jane Hill's (Anthropology, U. of
Arizona) work on 'Junk Spanish.' Jane has a magnificent collection of such
items (including advertising and other popular culture sources), and she
gave a presentation on these data in several places a few years ago. I lost
track of whether it was published or not. Anyone seriously intersted in the
topic (and her interpretation of the generally denigrating character of
such usage) should get in touch with her.
DInIs
Lynne: but the -o in "no problemo" is a different thing. it's
spanish, which contributes a lot of slang to american english...
alas, no. spanish would be problemA (which is masculine gender,
despite its -a, because it's a greek-derived word in -ma).
"no problemo" is mock-spanish. still probably not the same
thing as "daddy-o" etc., but not spanish.
arnold (zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]csli.stanford.edu)
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)432-1235
Fax: (517)432-2736
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 09:50:41 -0500
From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: More Naples, more pizza
NAPLES:
For some reason, I thought this was going to be easy.
The earliest "See Naples and Die" is not 1861. I checked the Naples
guidebooks, and "Vedi Napoli e po mori" is in:
Description of the View Of Naples and Surrounding Scenery, Henry Aston Barker
and I. Burford's Panorama, Strand, London, 1821.
Naples, the Beauties of its Bay, Fredonicus, pseud., NY, 1848.
Neither cites an author or reference.
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