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

 

 

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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