At 04:39 PM 6/24/2008, Spruiell, William C wrote: . . .
>When someone replies to "Ya eat yet?" with "Yeah I did,"  . . .

DD: I urge all to rush out and buy or steal, or whatever, Professor 
Richard betting's book, "Grammar Today: The New American Language and 
Grammar Primer." ISBN 9780979993602. It is child's play to the more 
experienced linguistics here, but for the rest of us, it is a 
fascinating introduction to the problems here being discussed. Would 
be a great High School text for the advanced and higher IQ students, 
and great for University Freshmen. Well I guess you would say I 
thoroughly enjoyed it. The part on what is the definition of a 
sentence is worth the price of admission. The part on tonality 
definition of what constitutes a sentence, mind boggling. {It is a 
sad thing to lose DD's mind or for his never having one, so to say.} 
I was asked by my ROKAF advisees in Korea, "What means the greeting, 
"Cheat jet? No chew?" Of course it was perfectly understandable to an 
American GI. "Did you eat, yet? No, did you?" I recall asking my 
Korean tutor what a particularly guttural sound was transliterated 
as. She said the sound did not exist in Korean. About a half hour 
later, as we left the disco, I heard the sound and punched her alert, 
it occurred again. She said, "I guess it does occur, I just never 
heard it that way, before. She listened over the next several days 
and reported that she was amazed that she hadn't noticed it before. 
It is like unto us in fly over land hearing a valley girl speak for 
the first time and thinking her statements are all questions, because 
we hear and interpret the intonations as question sentences. Fascinating.

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