On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 02:25:25PM -0600, McComb, Dave wrote:
> I've had it on pretty good authority that the plural of y'all is
> "all-y'all" as in "Why don't all-y'all come on down for some grits?" (01)
"all y'all" (or its variant "all o' y'all) is semantically redundant in
every southern dialect I'm familiar with and is used only to emphasize
the inclusiveness of the already plural "y'all". Deleting "all" from
your example would not alter the meaning, but its absence on a given
occasion might conceivably leave some of the hearers less certain about
whether they were part of the group to which the invitation was actually
extended. The only people I've heard use "y'all" as a singular pronoun
are yankees who don't speak the language. :-) (02)
-chris (03)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (04)
|