LINGUIST List 2.785

Tue 12 Nov 1991

Misc: Thanks, Doohickey, Modals, "like"

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Directory

1. , Thanks
2. , Re: 2.771 Responses: Thanks; Doohickey
3. CHARLES LAUGHLIN, Person
4. , might could
5. "ALICE FREED", RE: 2.759 Like

To everybody who replied to my request concerning grammar and style
checkers: thank you very much for the information. Quite a bit was
unknown to us. When we have compiled the information and added some
more from other sources, I will post it.
--Arie

Message 2: Re: 2.771 Responses: Thanks; Doohickey

Towards doohickey population control (for Bob Ingria and anyone else
interested):
 There IS a word for the whatchamacallit on the end of shoelaces: it's
AGLET, a word that's been around--albeit perhaps on the margins--since the
16th century (derived from Fr. aiguillette). Unfortunately, "I broke the
doohickey on the end of my shoelace" is doubtless more efficient as a
contribution to most conversations than "I broke my aglet".
 Larry Horn

RE: `PERSON'
In reference to Ellen Prince's query about `person': my friend Andre
Lepage just mentioned to me in another context that French anthropologists
have been discussing, in a Durkheimian and Levi-Straussian way, the
concept of `person.' It all goes back to Mauss' "A category of the
human mind:The concept of person, the concept of `ego'" (first published
in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 68, in 1938 - I
believe its in English). If you can buttonhole a Francophone, check
out "La notion de personne en Afrique noire" (Paris: CNRS, 1973).
Sorry for de personne en Afrique
noire."
Charles Laughlin
Charles Laughlin <CHARLESLCARLETON.CA>

A brand new piece of data, collected last night, for you double modal
collectors:
	There's one large loan that I might not could totally clean up.
The "could" here has very little stress, vowel is very reduced.
Speaker is a 40-something educated but remarkable linguistically
unaware (i.e., this is no tongue-in-cheek offering) speaker from east
of Houston.
ckk

Message 5: RE: 2.759 Like

In response to the posting concerning my examples of ways of
introducing direct quotes (belmorevax2.concordia.ca), I believe
that not all of the examples are correctly attributable to me.
In my posting about the use of _like_ I discussed only _like_ and
_go_ as quote introducers.
It is interesting that these approximately 30 year old graduate
students all said that _like_ does not REALLY introduce direct quotes
but instead indicates something about the speaker's (or subject's)
attitude. While that may also be true, I assure you that the
examples that I was referring to, used by speakers 22 years old and
younger, ARE direct quotes! For example, in my data, there is a
moment when a speaker says something that turns out to be
mistaken and a minute later, laughing at herself, she says about
herself, " And I was like,`----'!" where she quotes exactly the
words that she has uttered the minute before. I have heard this
used repeatedly. This is, as I said before, the form of choice
for quoting among the students whose speech I have studying.