Date: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 20:03:27 EDT

From: flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU

Subject: anymore, needs+pp, V+with



Ohio University Electronic Communication





Date: 29-Oct-1994 08:02pm EST



To: Remote Addressee ( _mx%"ads-l[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.bitnet )



From: Beverly Flanigan Dept: Linguistics

FLANIGAN Tel No:



Subject: anymore, needs+pp, V+with





Several comments on several threads:

-- Like fellow Northerner (and friend) Bev Hartford, I had never

heard positive, or fronted, 'anymore' before going down to Bloomington,

Indiana. In fact, after having heard a paper on the many syntactic and

semantic constraints on 'anymore' (at the Summer ADS meeting in

Albuquerque in 1980, by Frank Parker?), I was amazed to hear every rule

confirmed when I moved to Southeastern Ohio. I've heard it from people

from as far north as Akron, but no farther; nor have I heard it from

"Deep" Southerners.

-- Unlike Bev, I don't recall hearing "needs+p.p." in Bloomington,

but it is ubiquitous in this part of Ohio, and is by no means limited

to the "uneducated townies," contrary to what my out-of-state

undergraduates (and some graduates) think. Indeed, one of my graduate

students (from Portsmouth, Ohio) said that, rather like Joan

Livingston-Webber, she had never heard any alternate form until she

came to Ohio University. I like to show my classes a clipping from the

local newspaper showing the "Pillar Paintin'" of a church, with the

caption "The pillar bases needed replaced because they were rotting."

A reader (clearly an outsider, probably a "gownie") wrote in to

complain that his second-grader was "having enough trouble speaking

English correctly," and that while he "hate[d] to be picky," "maybe the

editor needs woke up"; to which the editor replied, "You're right.

You're being picky. I admit, though, the caption needs corrected."

-- "Come with" and similar constructions are very familiar to this

native Minnesotan, and, like others, I associate it with the German and

Scandinavian two-part (or separable) verbs used by our ancestors.

However, contrary to Allan Denchfield, no Minnesotan (not even Garrison

Keillor in his most fun-poking moments) would say "what nationality was

settled Minnesota with." BTW, my Indianan-Ohioan son laughs at my use

of "come with" but will occasionally say "needs washed," despite his

expressed rejection of this region's speech.

-- Minor notes: "Set out" and "if he would have" are indeed common

in Minnesota; on the latter, I don't know if German or the Scandinavian

languages allow this alternate subjunctive form. On equivalents of

John Baugh's "Home Training," I was about to offer "raised right," but

that's from 20 years in southern Indiana and Ohio; in Minnesota, we

were "brought up right."

-- Finally, Joan L-W is right about students needing "a good dose of

'nonstandard' speech in high places." I have my grad students replicate

Trudgill's test of polylectal comprehension (in _On Dialect_) using

Appalachian and other forms, and they regularly get "The sort of thing

only a foreigner would say" or "Nobody would say this, not even a

foreigner" on the first three expressions listed above, except from

respondents who have been here a while, who allow, "I'd never say this,

but some others might." It makes for good consciousness-raising.

--Beverly Olson Flanigan







Received: 29-Oct-1994 08:03pm