Re: [tied] Re: Satem shift

From: Anne Lambert
Message: 8677
Date: 2001-08-22

Re: [tied] Re: Satem shift on 8/21/01 9:36 PM, jpisc98357@... at jpisc98357@... wrote:

In a message dated 8/21/01 8:40:51 AM Central Daylight Time,
gpiotr@... writes:




> [Torsten:] As I've heard it, the tendency in American English today is
for the
past participle to be used everywhere eg.: "I have went", "I have took".

[Piotr:] "The past participle" ??? And can any American English speakers on
this list confirm this strange observation? "I been" or "he gone" do occur
in dialectal English, but this is usually the result of auxiliary-verb
suppression ("HAVE dropping"), not of paradigmatic levelling.


Dear Piotr & Torsten,

   As an American English speaker I can confirm that I have never used such
a construction.  I have heard it on occasion spoken by ill-educated African
Americans who use it colloquially within their own gangs.  I believe there
have been books on Black English if you are interested. Even further out of
sync with modern American English is Gullah English spoken by African
Americans in the coastal areas of Georgia and the Carolinas, the two dialects
have nothing in common. Clarence Thomas, Justice of our Supreme Court was
brought up as a Gullah speaker in Pin Point, Georgia.

   Several years ago in Oakland, California there was a movement to teach
classes in Black Englis with Standard English taught as a second language.  A
national uproar erupted and debate for and against was common.

Best regards,  John Piscopo
http://www.johnpiscoposwords.com
PO Box 137
Western Springs, IL 60558-0137
(708)246-7111

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Has anybody noticed a strange new conditional subjunctive in spoken American English, oen that I found repeatedly on "Rescue 911," for example:
   If she wouldn't have helped me, I would have died
   If I wouldn't have done that, I would have felt better
   Anne Lambert