LINGUIST List 2.742

Fri 01 Nov 1991

Misc: You Guys and Onomatopenia, Names

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Ron Smyth, Re: 2.724 You Guys
2. Dennis Baron, you guys > dudes
3. Eric Schiller, Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia
4. , Dench--BIF!BAM!BOP!
5. Georgia Green, Re: 2.731 Names and Titles

Message 1: Re: 2.724 You Guys

William Kehoe, also a northern Ontario speaker, pointed out to me that
'guys' is a plural marker in our (former?) dialect: I, you, he/she/it,
us guys, you(se) guys, them guys. I always wondered why people said
'them guys' instead of 'those guys'. It's interesting that the object
pronouns are used ('Us guys didn't have a chance'; 'Them guys get all the
breaks').
Now I'm wondering about the distribution of 'we' vs. 'us guys' (etc.) in
such dialects. There's something about initial mention: 'Us guys didn't
have a chance, but at least we didn't get shut out', but not '*We didn't
have a chance, but at least us guys didn't get shut out'.
Returning to my point in a previous posting about the possibility of tag
questions, I think that 'youse' is a true pronoun because it can be so
used, along with schwa reduction (...wouldn't youse -> wouldnchz, where  is
schwa).
Ron Smyth
smythlake.scar.utoronto.ca

To add to the _you guys_ gender-marking issue, a survey of
an unrepresentative sample of women aged 24-30something (my
daughter and some of her friends) reveals they use _you guys_
w.o. gender marking, and also use _dudes_ to refer to
all-female groups. So much for resisting masculines as
generics. (Incidentally, older +f versions of dude include
dudette and dudine, from the 1930s and 1940s, in AMerican
English).
--

Message 3: Re: 2.706 Onomatopenia

Don't overlook the important work by Gerard Diffloth on Expressives in
this context, e.g. Notes on Expressive Meaning in CLS 8, reprinted in
"The Best of CLS" (1988).
Eric Schiller
(ed. of Best of CLS)

Cf. Oswalt, Robert 1973. Inanimate imitatives in Pomo. Pp. 175-190 in Jesse
 Sawe(sp.error) Sawyer, ed. Studies in American Indian languages, University of
 Califpr	ornia Press.
Shirley Silver, Dept. of Anthropology Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA
 94928 [silversonoma.edu]

Message 5: Re: 2.731 Names and Titles

I have to respond to the story about Householder's review of Robin Lakoff's
Abstract Syntax. It's possible Householder (believed he) was being chivalrous.
I'm less inclined to believe Lakoff was indifferent.
I, too, wrote a review of that book. When I submitted it to Language, all
of the references to the author were Lastname. When I got the galleys,
all (except one, curiously) had been changed to Mrs. Lastname. Discussion
with the editor revealed that the motivation or rationalization
was respect and/or "avoidance of confusion". I pointed out that differential
naming practices in scholarly discussion did not serve to display respect,
which was irrelevant anyway, but rather marked that individual as an outsider,
and observed that no one worried about distinguishing
unrelated linguists with the same name (say, Henry Lee Smith and Carlota
Smith) from each other by sex, or worried about linguists of the same gender
with the same last name. I don't recall seeing "Mrs." in the pages of
Language after that.
This was a long time ago, you know, before 1970.
Georgia Green