Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 22:09:09 EDT

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU

Subject: Re: Distribution of positive "anymore"



Well, I TRIED to send my reply to Karen's message directly to her at the above

address, but my mailer told me that LUST was an unknown node, suggesting such

sublimations as 'CUSB', 'HUSC', 'MUSC', and 'TUSK'. Talk about safe sex...

Anyway, what I was going to say to her and will perforce announce to one

and all is that a propos of intransitive (or adverbial) 'with', Safire's "On

Language" column yesterday in the New York Times Magazine (p. 20) presented

this as a trend sweeping the nation. He speculates a bit about possible

Germanic sources, citing our own John Algeo ("the neo-linguistic observer for

American Speech") and then suggesting that we view object-less 'with' as an

insance of "what the great Danish grammarian Otto Jesperson called 'drift'".

I thought it was JespersEn. And in fact, I REALLY thought it was Sapir.

Of course, it's all the same to them anymore; after all, you can't take it

with. --Larry