The indefinite you

English Studies

Volumn 85, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 161-176

  Hyman, Eric ^a  

^a FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 3142758745     PISSN: 0013838X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1076/enst.85.2.161.30496     Document Type: Review

References (92)

1. A portion of this paper was read to the Modern Language Association meeting, 28 December 2000, Washington D.C.
2. Excerpts from an exchange between Tommy Smyth and J. P. DellaCamera, telecast of the Senegal vs. Turkey World Cup match, 2002, ESPN. I am indebted to Sara Oswald for this passage and for passages (13) (14) and (15) below.
3. Otto Jesperson, The Philosophy of Grammar (London and New York, 1924), p. 212.
4. Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Harrow, 1985) (hereinafter cited as Quirk et al, Comprehensive Grammar), p. 350; Katie Wales, Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67-8.
5. Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Harrow, 1985) (hereinafter cited as Quirk et al, Comprehensive Grammar), p. 350; Katie Wales, Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67-8.
6. Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Harrow, 1985) (hereinafter cited as Quirk et al, Comprehensive Grammar), p. 350; Katie Wales, Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67-8.
7. Quoted in Peter Mühlhäusler and Rom Harré, Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity (Oxford, 1990), pp. 168-9.
8. Suzanna Andrews, 'Betting the Kingdom', Vanity Fair (March 2002), p. 256.
9. Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary, (New York, 1998), p. 16
10. Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (New York, 1996), p. 90.
11. Derek Malcolm, Obituary for Pauline Kael, The Guardian Weekly. 13-19 September 2001. p. 22.
12. Personal Pronouns, pp. 78-81
13. 'The Season That Wasn't', The New York Times Magazine, 11 August 2002, p. 44.
14. Philosophy of Grammar, pp. 215-16 esp. n. 1; Essentials of English Grammar (University of Alabama, 1964) 150-51; A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Copenhagen, 1949) vol.7, 152-6.
15. Philosophy of Grammar, pp. 215-16 esp. n. 1; Essentials of English Grammar (University of Alabama, 1964) 150-51; A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Copenhagen, 1949) vol.7, 152-6.
16. Philosophy of Grammar, pp. 215-16 esp. n. 1; Essentials of English Grammar (University of Alabama, 1964) 150-51; A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (Copenhagen, 1949) vol.7, 152-6.
17. Pp. 182-3, 353-4, 387-8.
18. Oxford English Grammar (Oxford, 1996), p. 172
19. Pp. 58-9, 78-84.
20. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5 (New York and London, 1965) s.v. Logical Paradoxes, p. 47; R.M. Sainsbury, Paradoxes (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 147-8.
21. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5 (New York and London, 1965) s.v. Logical Paradoxes, p. 47; R.M. Sainsbury, Paradoxes (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 147-8.
22. Bengt Jacobsson, 'A Note on Common Number they/them/their and who', Studio Neophilologica 40 (1968), 141-6, makes a similar point for they and who, though not for you. He calls them 'common-number pronouns'.
23. I am using utterance to mean a small group of sentences, written, spoken, or written to recreate speech, that can be thought of as a more or less coherent unit of discourse. The passages I have reproduced or created here as illustrative tokens are what I mean by utterances. Because most of the occurrences of the indefinite you that I have found are representations of speech, I shall be using the terms speaker and hearer rather than writer and reader.
24. That is, you does not overtly or morphologically encode degrees of formality.
25. The use of they to resolve problems of gender bias has been widely discussed; see, for example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 119-33, and Michael Newman, Epicene Pronouns: The Linguistics of a Prescriptive Problem (New York and London, 1997). Quirk et al., Comprehensive Grammar, p. 770, mention in passing the possibility of using you.
26. The use of they to resolve problems of gender bias has been widely discussed; see, for example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 119-33, and Michael Newman, Epicene Pronouns: The Linguistics of a Prescriptive Problem (New York and London, 1997). Quirk et al., Comprehensive Grammar, p. 770, mention in passing the possibility of using you.
27. The use of they to resolve problems of gender bias has been widely discussed; see, for example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 119-33, and Michael Newman, Epicene Pronouns: The Linguistics of a Prescriptive Problem (New York and London, 1997). Quirk et al., Comprehensive Grammar, p. 770, mention in passing the possibility of using you.
28. That is, English lacks a formal, grammaticalized morphological or lexical distinction The distinction can sometimes be rendered contextually or pragmatically.
29. Qtd. in Steven Labaton, 'Downturn and Shift in Population Feed Boom in White-Collar Crime', New York Times, 2 June 2002, 1, 22.
30. Gerry Cheevers, qtd. in Mark Beech, 'Gerry Cheevers, Goaltender', Sports Illustrated Vol. 96 No. 24, 10 June 2002, 19-20.
31. L. John Wertham, 'Clay Pigeons', Sports Illustrated Vol 96 No. 24 (June 10, 2002), 98.
32. Robert Barnard, Death of a Salesperson and Other Untimely Exits (New York, 1989), 58
33. Qtd. in Michael Sokolove, 'How to Lose $850 Million - And Not Really Care', The New York Times Magazine, 9 June 2002, 66.
34. M. A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Cohesion in English (Harlow, 1986) 31-57 esp. 33.
35. Alex Markels, 'A Marketing Cry: Don't Fence Them In', The New York Times, 1 September, 2002, Section 3, 6.
36. Jan A. van Ek and Nico J. Rabat, The Student's Grammar of English (Oxford, 1984), p. 150, notice this phenomenon but apparently don't recognize - or at least label - it as anaphoric: 'Contrary to what one might expect, you is often used - informally - to refer vaguely to the speaker/writer himself or herself.
37. Although Mühlhäusler and Harré, Pronouns and People, are primarily concerned with interpersonal functions of personal pronouns, they never consider this usage of you.
38. E.g. Talmy Givón, English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction (Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 1993); Dwight Bolinger, Pronouns and Repeated Nouns (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977); Barbara Fox, Discourse Structure and Anaphora: Written and Conversational English (Cambridge, 1987); Ronald H. Smyth, Cognitive Aspect of Anaphora Judgment and Resolution, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986); Rodney Huddleston, Introduction to the Grammar of English (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 272-98.
39. E.g. Talmy Givón, English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction (Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 1993); Dwight Bolinger, Pronouns and Repeated Nouns (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977); Barbara Fox, Discourse Structure and Anaphora: Written and Conversational English (Cambridge, 1987); Ronald H. Smyth, Cognitive Aspect of Anaphora Judgment and Resolution, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986); Rodney Huddleston, Introduction to the Grammar of English (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 272-98.
40. E.g. Talmy Givón, English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction (Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 1993); Dwight Bolinger, Pronouns and Repeated Nouns (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977); Barbara Fox, Discourse Structure and Anaphora: Written and Conversational English (Cambridge, 1987); Ronald H. Smyth, Cognitive Aspect of Anaphora Judgment and Resolution, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986); Rodney Huddleston, Introduction to the Grammar of English (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 272-98.
41. E.g. Talmy Givón, English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction (Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 1993); Dwight Bolinger, Pronouns and Repeated Nouns (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977); Barbara Fox, Discourse Structure and Anaphora: Written and Conversational English (Cambridge, 1987); Ronald H. Smyth, Cognitive Aspect of Anaphora Judgment and Resolution, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986); Rodney Huddleston, Introduction to the Grammar of English (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 272-98.
42. E.g. Talmy Givón, English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction (Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 1993); Dwight Bolinger, Pronouns and Repeated Nouns (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977); Barbara Fox, Discourse Structure and Anaphora: Written and Conversational English (Cambridge, 1987); Ronald H. Smyth, Cognitive Aspect of Anaphora Judgment and Resolution, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1986); Rodney Huddleston, Introduction to the Grammar of English (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 272-98.
43. Cohesion, p. 48. But they hedge slightly with adverbs like normally and typically; and see p. 51.
44. Cohesion, p. 48. But they hedge slightly with adverbs like normally and typically; and see p. 51.
45. E.g. Peter Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora: A Study of the Role of Pronouns in Syntax and Discourse (London, 1983), p. 228 n.37; Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 22.
46. E.g. Peter Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora: A Study of the Role of Pronouns in Syntax and Discourse (London, 1983), p. 228 n.37; Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 22.
47. Transformational grammar accounts of anaphora are only concerned with third-person pronouns and NPs. In large measure, this is because transformational grammars consider only single-sentence syntax and many, many of my tokens represent multiple sentences.
48. Quirk et al., Comprehensive Grammar, 354.
49. How - or even whether - pronouns refer is a very complex issue in linguistics and philosophy, beyond the scope of this essay. For an excellent survey, see Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora, esp. 1-31.
50. Quirk et al. Comprehensive Grammar, pp. 1402-14. What I am calling an 'expletive' Quirk et al. Comprehensive Grammar, call a 'pseudo-subject', p. 756 n.a., and is frequently called a 'dummy subject'.
51. Quirk et al. Comprehensive Grammar, pp. 1402-14. What I am calling an 'expletive' Quirk et al. Comprehensive Grammar, call a 'pseudo-subject', p. 756 n.a., and is frequently called a 'dummy subject'.
52. Lisa Levenson, Bloomberg News, 24 July 2002.
53. Wells, qtd. in Labaton (see n. 14).
54. Personal communications to the author, 18 December 2001, 6 February 2002.
55. Jill McGown, A Shred of Evidence (New York, 1995), p. 88.
56. Essentials of English Grammar, p. 151.
57. 'One Can Use an Indefinite "You" Occasionally, Can't You?' College English 14 no. 4 (January 1953) 216-219. Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (New York, 1993) p. 473, s. v. you: 'Indefinite you, used when you're addressing nobody in particular, as in When you hike in the woods, you take a risk of encountering ticks, used to be criticized by teachers as a misuse of the pronoun, but it is clearly Standard in all but the most Formal or Oratorical'. Observe Wilson's 'When YOU're addressing'.
58. 'One Can Use an Indefinite "You" Occasionally, Can't You?' College English 14 no. 4 (January 1953) 216-219. Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (New York, 1993) p. 473, s. v. you: 'Indefinite you, used when you're addressing nobody in particular, as in When you hike in the woods, you take a risk of encountering ticks, used to be criticized by teachers as a misuse of the pronoun, but it is clearly Standard in all but the most Formal or Oratorical'. Observe Wilson's 'When YOU're addressing'.
59. nd. (Boston, 1996), pp. 62-63.
60. nd. (Boston, 1996), pp. 62-63.
61. Langan, Sentence Skills pp. 176, 177.1 have capitalized the YOUs.
62. Ibid. pp. 174-78.
63. Klammer and Schulz, Analyzing English Grammar, p. 70. My number (30a, b) is their (38) a,b.
64. The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (New York, 1965), pp. 486-487, s.v. you. By serendipitous coincidence, Bernstein's book happens to be shelved in my university's library immediately next to Eric Partridge's You Have a Point: A Guide to Punctuation and its Allies (rpt. London, 1977).
65. The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (New York, 1965), pp. 486-487, s.v. you. By serendipitous coincidence, Bernstein's book happens to be shelved in my university's library immediately next to Eric Partridge's You Have a Point: A Guide to Punctuation and its Allies (rpt. London, 1977).
66. For example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 1-5; Peter Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (1997), s.v. pronoun', Dwight Bolinger, 'Pronouns in Discourse', in Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax, ed. Talmy Givón (New York, 1979), 289-309; Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora, pp. 1-31.
67. For example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 1-5; Peter Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (1997), s.v. pronoun', Dwight Bolinger, 'Pronouns in Discourse', in Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax, ed. Talmy Givón (New York, 1979), 289-309; Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora, pp. 1-31.
68. For example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 1-5; Peter Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (1997), s.v. pronoun', Dwight Bolinger, 'Pronouns in Discourse', in Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax, ed. Talmy Givón (New York, 1979), 289-309; Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora, pp. 1-31.
69. For example, Wales, Personal Pronouns, pp. 1-5; Peter Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (1997), s.v. pronoun', Dwight Bolinger, 'Pronouns in Discourse', in Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax, ed. Talmy Givón (New York, 1979), 289-309; Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora, pp. 1-31.
70. Halliday and Hassan, Cohesion, passim, but esp. p. 3, pp. 31-33, 306-309; Mühlhäusler and Harré, Pronouns and People, pp. 49-55.
71. Halliday and Hassan, Cohesion, passim, but esp. p. 3, pp. 31-33, 306-309; Mühlhäusler and Harré, Pronouns and People, pp. 49-55.
72. I found this sentence in Bosch, Agreement and Anaphora, pp. 141-4, where it is attributed to Lauri Karttunen. 'Notorious' is Bosch's term.
73. M. Stanley Whitley, 'Person and Number in the Use of We, You, and They', American Speech 53 (1978), 18-38, esp. 24-5, observes phonological and semantic restraints on the indefinite you (he calls it the impersonal you), among them that the indefinite you cannot be stressed. But the Della-Camera-Smyth interchange and Passage (26) show that the distinction between stressed personal you and unstressed indefinite you is not always strong enough to be foolproof. Whitley also claims that you followed by a relative clause, e.g. 'You who do such a thing should know better', must have a personal construal. While such a construction probably does include the personal, it also clearly expands into an indefinite NP. Dwight Bolinger, 'To Catch a Metaphor: You as Norm', American Speech 54 (Fall 1979), 194-209, elegantly refutes Whitley.
74. M. Stanley Whitley, 'Person and Number in the Use of We, You, and They', American Speech 53 (1978), 18-38, esp. 24-5, observes phonological and semantic restraints on the indefinite you (he calls it the impersonal you), among them that the indefinite you cannot be stressed. But the Della-Camera-Smyth interchange and Passage (26) show that the distinction between stressed personal you and unstressed indefinite you is not always strong enough to be foolproof. Whitley also claims that you followed by a relative clause, e.g. 'You who do such a thing should know better', must have a personal construal. While such a construction probably does include the personal, it also clearly expands into an indefinite NP. Dwight Bolinger, 'To Catch a Metaphor: You as Norm', American Speech 54 (Fall 1979), 194-209, elegantly refutes Whitley.
75. Because this term is a regionalism, non-standard in most dialects, and somewhat stigmatized, its spelling and pronunciation vary. I will be using the spelling you-all in this essay, not as an indication of my preference, but because my focus is on the morpheme {-all}. The term is sometimes pronounced as a disyllabic [ju:o:l] but more usually as a monosyllable [jo:l] or [ja:l] (these transcriptions are very broad: individual pronunciations will vary considerably).
76. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
77. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
78. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
79. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
80. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
81. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
82. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
83. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
84. Ray Cunningham, Southern Talk: A Disappearing Language (Asheville, NC, 1993), p. 177; Wilburn Love, Speaking Southern: A Dixie Lexicon (Minden, LA, 1994), p. 42; Norman E. Eliason, Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860 (Chapel Hill, 1956); rpt. (New York, 1980), pp. 238, 239; Quirk, et al Comprehensive Grammar, 344n; Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar, p. 167. Cunningham must be aware that you-all can be used in the singular because he writes 'never (correctly) used to address one person'. Wilson, Columbia Guide, p. 473, says you-all 'is almost always plural'. Lowry Axley, '"You All and We All" Again', American Speech 2 (May 1927), 343-4: "The idea that you-all is used in the South by any class of people as a form of address to one person is a hydra-headed monster that sprouts more heads than apparently can ever be cut off. Axley is rebutting Estelle Rees Morrison, '"You-All and We-All'", American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133, who claims the usage of you all as a singular among 'the humbler classes' and is a 'respectful suffix'.
85. Thomas Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (New York, 1944), s.v. you-all, y'all gets it right by subdividing the entry into three sections, for plural, singular, and 'an unspecified number'. Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 76, acknowledges 'the evidence is conflicting' and cites E. C Hills, 'The Plural Forms of "You"', American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133; Axley, ibid.; and Gina Richardson, 'Can Y'all Function as a Singular Pronoun in Southern Dialect?', American Speech 59 (1984), 51-9.
86. Thomas Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (New York, 1944), s.v. you-all, y'all gets it right by subdividing the entry into three sections, for plural, singular, and 'an unspecified number'. Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 76, acknowledges 'the evidence is conflicting' and cites E. C Hills, 'The Plural Forms of "You"', American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133; Axley, ibid.; and Gina Richardson, 'Can Y'all Function as a Singular Pronoun in Southern Dialect?', American Speech 59 (1984), 51-9.
87. Thomas Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (New York, 1944), s.v. you-all, y'all gets it right by subdividing the entry into three sections, for plural, singular, and 'an unspecified number'. Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 76, acknowledges 'the evidence is conflicting' and cites E. C Hills, 'The Plural Forms of "You"', American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133; Axley, ibid.; and Gina Richardson, 'Can Y'all Function as a Singular Pronoun in Southern Dialect?', American Speech 59 (1984), 51-9.
88. Thomas Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (New York, 1944), s.v. you-all, y'all gets it right by subdividing the entry into three sections, for plural, singular, and 'an unspecified number'. Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 76, acknowledges 'the evidence is conflicting' and cites E. C Hills, 'The Plural Forms of "You"', American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133; Axley, ibid.; and Gina Richardson, 'Can Y'all Function as a Singular Pronoun in Southern Dialect?', American Speech 59 (1984), 51-9.
89. Thomas Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (New York, 1944), s.v. you-all, y'all gets it right by subdividing the entry into three sections, for plural, singular, and 'an unspecified number'. Wales, Personal Pronouns, p. 76, acknowledges 'the evidence is conflicting' and cites E. C Hills, 'The Plural Forms of "You"', American Speech 2 (December 1926), 133; Axley, ibid.; and Gina Richardson, 'Can Y'all Function as a Singular Pronoun in Southern Dialect?', American Speech 59 (1984), 51-9.
90. Paul J. Hopper and Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Grammaticalization (Cambridge, 1993), p. 150.
91. I have chosen cheesecake as my exemplar because it can be either a count or non-count (mass) noun. Non-count nouns, of course, cannot be pluralized at all.
92. Morrison (see n. 54).