Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 13:05:26 -0500

From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU

Subject: Re: y'all are crazy



meaning "you and yours." I think that thorough research would conclude

that there is always some implied or connoted plural meaning even when it

might seem otherwise.



In SOD (Survey of Oklahoma Dialects), Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery found

a large number of people who claimed to use singular "y'all" themselves.

This might be easy to ignore, given that Oklahoma is not *really* the

South, but they claim that the 1994 Southern Focus Poll, conducted by

the Center for Study of the American South at UNC, found similar self-

reports among respondents in The Real South.



As a native Southerner, I'm convinced that they're wrong, of course.

Come to the ADS meeting in Chicago to hear why -- if I've figured out

how to prove it by then -- if I haven't, you'll have to be satisfied

with hearing about things like "y'all"/"you-all" distribution instead.

--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)