Thomas L. Clark English Department UNLV 89154
tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nevada.edu
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 06:43:53 +0500
From: "Connie C. Eble" cceble[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GIBBS.OIT.UNC.EDU
Subject: Re: Rock'n Roll
I think that you figured out from context just exactly what rock 'n'
roll means to your classmate--that he thinks something is good or great.
This example is probably a specimen of the slang of your classmate's
group. I think that I have the expression in my corpus of college slang
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I do not have my
files at hand to check it now. As for the origin of the phrase as a term
referring to music (which the originator of rock'n'roll as a slang
expression for great probably had in mind), Gerald Cohen has a excellent
piece in Comments on Etymology, I think in the December issue of 1992, or
somewhere around that time.
Do you know Jonathan Lighter in the English Department at the
University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is completing a dictionary of
slang and might have some information for you.
Connie Eble cceble[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gibbs.oit.unc.edu
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 07:50:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET
Subject: Re: th/dh
How about thy and thigh for starters (although it may not be fair for me t
o play this game since I am a pin pen conflater.
Dennis Preston
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 07:55:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET
Subject: Re: th/dh
Larry,
In some radical stress-fronting dialects of the US South assure and azure
would fit your needs. Still a stretch, huh?
Dennis Preston
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 07:59:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET
Subject: Re: th/dh
Rudy,
The loss of voice in houses is strong in the Great Lakes area as well, and
precisely in areas with strong Scandanavian, German, Dutch influence.
Dennis Preston
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 07:09:47 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU
Subject: Half Past the Hour
Is there a regional distribution for "half past" as in "half past three"?
I had never really thought about it until a recent discussion on WORDS-L,
in which I am almost alone in saying that I have never used the expression
and think of it as more British than American. The only other person on
the list who says she finds "three-thirty" much more "normal" sounding than
"half past three" is a Texan, although another Texan claims that "half past"
is quite common.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 08:58:25 EST
From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
The above was perfectly colloquial, and indeed represented the normal way to
denote e.g. 3:30, for me as a young native New Yorker and still does. I had no
idea that it's outside anyone's dialect area (within English, that is!).
Introspecting, though, I probably do tend to avoid using it with children (my
own or others), and I would predict that it might tend to disappear as digital
timepieces become more and more standard.
Larry
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 10:31:38 EST
From: "Beverly S. Hartford" HARTFORD[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UCS.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: Re: th/dh
Rudy: Those of us who are REALLY northeasterners (e.g. north of Vermont)
don't think of New Yorkers as such. You'll be happy to know that I
at least keep the vl/vd contrast in your example, but then I've
been contaminated by living in the southwest and midwest. However,
I have not noticed it changing in southern Maine, at least, where
there would be minimal immigrant substratum effect. Bev Hartford
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 09:02:36 -0500
From: "William A. Kretzschmar, Jr." billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ATLAS.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
In the LAMSAS data, _half after_ occurs in only 82 of 483 communities;
_half past_ occurs in 435 of 483 communities. According to our spatial
autocorrelation statistic, neither one is significantly clustered at the
p .01 level we prefer (though p .03 for _half after_, and its number of
occurrences is at the lower end of what is possible for the SA statistic,
so it is reasonable to say that it may well actually be clustered).
Observation of a plot of _half after_ suggests that in is Midland and
Southern, with scattered occurrences in northern urban centers and
upstate NY.
_xxx-thirty_ patterns in the LAMSAS data in South Carolina and Upstate
New York---it is a classic example of what we call a "McDavid
distribution", because Raven recorded the _xxx-thirty_ response when he
heard it but Guy Lowman didn't bother to write it down.
That's the facts, Natalie, from the 1930s and 40s.
******************************************************************************
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
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 10:35:45 CST
From: Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
In Message Tue, 30 Nov 1993 07:09:47 -0600,
Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU writes:
Is there a regional distribution for "half past" as in "half past three"?
Natalie,
Half past is how I always said it before I got my digital watch.
Grew up in NYC in the 1940s-60s.
Dennis (not dInnis)
--
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 10:42:46 EST
From: "Beverly S. Hartford" HARTFORD[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UCS.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: Re: song
Yeah, but we call it a Northeaster! Bev Hartford (a native Mainer)
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 11:52:00 EST
From: "Charles M. Rosenberg" BORSO[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IRISHMVS.BITNET
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
I was born and raised in and near Chicago and went to college
near Philadelphia. To my ear three-thirty is the norm, though
I have heard half-past three as well.
Charles M. Rosenberg, University of Notre Dame
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 11:35:10 CST
From: Mike Picone MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.BITNET
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
One element that is missing so far in the `half past' discussion and that
will contribute to its survival even if at a very low incidence is the
fact that `XXX-thirty' cannot be used with expressions such as `midnight'
and `noon' whereas `half past' can (at least according to my speech
habits, which were established primarily in the Chicago area).
Mike Picone
U Alabama
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 10:19:02 -0400
From: "Terry Pratt, UPEI" TPRATT[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UPEI.CA
Subject: Re: th/dh
thy thigh is absolutely a minimal pair for me.
They look better in pairs anyway.
Terry Pratt Ontario and Prince Edward Island
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Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 14:27:02 -0230
From: "Philip Hiscock,
MUN Folklore & Language Archive" philiph[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]KEAN.UCS.MUN.CA
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
I grew up in St John's, Newfoundland where I always said "ha' past"
(no [f] in normal speech). We had a teasing rhyme for people who
were annoyingly asking for the time:
Ha' past, kiss me ass,
Quarter to me hole.
By the way, even now - in my forties - I have no idea what
people mean when they say "It's quarter of four" - does that
mean quarter _to_ or quarter _after_ the hour?
And are those "quarter" times associated with the half times - that is,
do such people as Natalie, to whom "half past" is foreign, find the
"quarter of/to/after" times foreign, too?
-Philip Hiscock
philiph[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]kean.ucs.mun.ca
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 12:15:11 CST
From: Mike Picone MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.BITNET
Subject: sh/zh
In any case, the situation with th/dh pairs is a lot more robust that what
we find with sh/zh (voiceless/voiced palatal fricatives). The best I've ever
come up with here is Confucian/confusion, while other would-be pairs involve
either proper names invoked for the occasion (Asher/azure), marginal instances
of productive word-formation (mesher/measure), or near-minimal pairs that
don't quite get there (pressure/pleasure, thresher/treasure). Can anybody do
better?
Larry Horn
For some, like me, in normal speech _fission_ and _fishing_ would constitute
a minimal pair, as in "nuclear fission" |+voice| and "I'm goin' fishin'"
|-voice|. This will not work, of course, for those who have either the
voiceless version of _fission_ or who maintian either |i| or a word-final
velar nasal as elements of participial -ing .
Mike Picone
U Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 13:47:07 -0500
From: "William A. Kretzschmar, Jr." billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ATLAS.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Quarter to/till/of the Hour
For the record, LAMSAS records show that each of these three variants
occurs in about half the LAMSAS communities, and each is significantly
clustered according to the spatial autocorrelation statistic.
Observation of a plot (I can make a plot in about 60 seconds with
the LAMSASplot program I wrote, provided that we have completed the
database for the question wanted; the LAMSASplot program requires a
Mac with 13" screen, and you can have it free) _quarter till_ is a
Midland and Southern item, with heaviest concentration in West Virginia;
_quarter to_ has a rather curious distribution, with concentrations in
eastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina, but also the Inland North
and the coastal South; _quarter of_ occurs north of the Mason Dixon
line, but with many scattered occurrences in the Appalachians and Upland
South. We also have responses with "15" and "45", but I have not plotted
them.
******************************************************************************
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
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 13:59:33 EST
From: Dan Mosser MOSSERD[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VTVM1.BITNET
Subject: noon and points around it
So "half-past noon" works for some...I find that interesting because
the other day my brother said "quarter to noon" and it struck me as odd;
when I asked him about it, he said it sounded odd to him too. So I wasn't
sure whether it might be purely a performance error, or an incipient
neomorphism, or what. Can those of you for whom "half-past noon" is
OK buy quarter-to or ten'til noon? Dan Mosser
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 12:21:25 -0600
From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
And are those "quarter" times associated with the half times - that is,
do such people as Natalie, to whom "half past" is foreign, find the
"quarter of/to/after" times foreign, too?
No. I always say "quarter of." If it's not a quarter of the hour, I'm
more likely to say "till," although "of" doesn't strike me as odd. In
other words, I might say "ten of three," but I would be much more likely
to say "ten till three." I would almost certainly say "a quarter of three,"
however -- not "quarter till/to." I would never under any circumstances
say "half past" anything.
I had never thought about the problem with noon-thirty or midnight-thirty
until it was mentioned today. I guess the context has always made clear
which 12:30 I'm talking about.
--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 14:19:07 CST
From: Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU
Subject: quarter of
`A quarter of' is `a quarter to/till' ie, `before,' the hour. `A quarter
of 7' is not `1 3/4,' as one misguided usage "expert" once insisted. Nor
is `a quarter to' `15 minutes toward the next hour,' as another one
maintained.
The one I've always had trouble remembering was `half seven' -- is
that 6:30 or 7:30 (or is it really 3.5 after all)?
Dennis (that's d/E/nnis)
--
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 16:01:19 CST
From: Mike Picone MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.BITNET
Subject: Re: noon and points around it
`Ten to noon' is definitely okay by me. `Quarter to noon' less so, but I think
`quarter' has less liberty in association with `noon': `quarter after noon'
for example lends to confusion. `Quarter after midnight', on the other hand,
is perfectly okay.
Mike Picone
U Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 19:34:00 EST
From: "Dennis.Preston" 22709MGR[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSU.BITNET
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
A grad student of mine is currently eliciting responses to What time is it?
requests with an eye towards half-past and quarter to (and after). She will
also check on the respondent's timepiece configurationm (digital versus
nondigital), and she we challenge accuracy (e.g., What time is it exactly? I
need to set my watch?) to see what influence different time tolerances have on
the type of response. This research will be reported on next week, and I'll
try to post a summary to you. (It will not, of course, deal with regional
variation except to the extent that the responses will be all taken from young
Michiganders.)
Dennis Preston
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 20:43:31 EST
From: David Bergdahl bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: loss of dialect distinctiveness
Ohio University Electronic Communication
Date: 30-Nov-1993 08:42pm EST
To: Remote Addressee ( _MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU )
From: David Bergdahl Dept: English
BERGDAHL Tel No: (614) 593-2783
Subject: loss of dialect distinctiveness
In response to the remark about the loss of a distinctive NY-accent I offer the
following. Although I left Brooklyn in 1942 and moved to Nassau County I had an
identificable "Brooklyn" accent well into my youth. I remember in 1950--Mario
Lanza's song "Be My Love" was the big hit--at my aunt's house after church using
"Earl" for "Oil" and vice versa--my cousin Lois had a boyfriend named Oil who
worked in an earl station. But nobody at school remarked upon it. When the
great outmigration from the city started in the 1950's I was one of the
local--i.e. Long Island--kids rather than a city kid. So I know that as a kid I
had a strong dialect. Since 1958 when I went to college--and was teased by
upstate and Penn kids over my pronunciation of "coffee" &c.--I've lived outside
metropolitan NY, first in Syracuse, then Boston, then Syracuse again and for the
last 25 years SouthEast Ohio. My dialect has moderated, but Ohioans still
identify me as "eastern." Now this is a long preamble of a tale, but I had the
occasion this fall to visit my daughter Anya who's a grad student at Pratt
Institute in Brooklyn. Not only did I hear few "classic" Brooklyn accents but
my daughter's boyfriend--from LI--affirmed that the "classic" [or should I say
stereotypical?] dialect features aren't salient any more. Moreover, he couldn't
recognize my dialect as "native' to the area. Perhaps with a different ethnic make up, the "city dialect" founded on Irish, Jewish and
Italian immigrant pronunciations is already outdated. A decade ago I was told
by the English chair that the three largest ethnic groups at Queens College were Carribeans, Central
American Hispanics and Israelis. Maybe we should look to them for the new
accommodation model.
David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens "Gateway to West Virginia"
BERGDAHL [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Received: 30-Nov-1993 08:43pm
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 17:37:46 -0800
From: Donald Livingston deljr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour
For my idiolect, "It's a quarter of four" unambiguously means 3:45.
Three variations sound fine: quarter of/to/till four. What's odd is
that although "quarter till four" sounds fine, "quarter until four"
sounds silly to me.
Usage gets strange. "Half past midnight" and "half past noon" sound
fine. But "It's a quarter after midnight/noon" sounds funny.
As Emily Litella said, "It's always something."
All the best, D. Livingston.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 22:44:00 -0500
From: chiwen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU
Subject: rock n roll
Hi,
Thank you all for giving me those reponses to "rock n roll." As
Rudy Troike suggested, I called my classmate and asked him what he meant by
"rock n roll." He gave me the answer, "That's right. Let's do it." Indeed,
he expressed his positive attitude and excitement by using this slang.
I think Erick Byrd has a good comment on this phrase. It is
interesting to know that rock n roll music indicates the feeling of "letting
go" of all inhibition. As a foreigner with different cultural background,
I did not realized this until Erick pointed it out.
Sheila Wang
wang[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utkvx.utk.edu
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End of ADS-L Digest - 29 Nov 1993 to 30 Nov 1993
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