Y'all up there on the frozen tundra may think y'all're special because y'all can say "we'uns" and we here in the balmy Southland can't say "we'all," but have you considered it may be because we like to avoid redundancy? What's more, we can say the possessive "y'all's sunburn." Up there can y'all say "you'uns' frostbite"?
Dick Veit in Wilmington, NC
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Thu 3/20/2008 11:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Once and Future English Tense
I object. Why a contraction whose pronunciation is contested when there
are perfectly fine analogical Upper Midwestern and Northeastern forms
like "youse" and "you'uns"? Granted, "you'uns" is also a contraction,
but it's spawned a complete plural pronoun declension: we'uns, us'uns,
you'uns, you'unses, they'uns, them'uns. So it's a productive form,
which "y'all," a nonce form, can't claim. Not only that, but "we'uns"
has even inspired a novel, The Weans, by Robert Nathan (Knopf 1960), an
archeological report on investigations in North America. A great read,
by the way!
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Layton
Sent: 2008-03-20 22:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Once and Future English Tense
DD -
One of the questions I have in my little game of "Stump the Student" is
why "y'all" should take the place of "you" as the a standard second
person plural pronoun.
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:49:43 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Once and Future English Tense
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> At 09:05 AM 3/20/2008, Carol Morrison wrote: . . .
> >Analyzing English Grammar, by Klammer, Schulz, & Volpe, "There is no
> >future tense morpheme in English, no affix that can be attached to a
> >verb to indicate that the action will take place in the future.
> >Simple future time must be expressed by other words in the sentence"
. . .
> > 1) Modals . . .
> >2) Present Tense + Adverbial Modifiers . . .
>
> DD: Now that hit me hard. I thank y'all for the information. I never
> even considered the idea. Trapped in Latin Grammar, I am. Going back
> to rearrange my paradigms.
>
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