LINGUIST List 4.834

Wed 13 Oct 1993

Disc: Null-Object

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Re: 4.816 Null object
2. Keith Miller, Re: 4.806 Null-object
3. "Reinhard, Re: "Go with," Non-American versus American English morphology
4. "david joseph kathman", Re: 4.828 Can/Can't, Come With
5. Joseph P Stemberger-1, Re: 4.828 Can/Can't, Come With

Message 1: Re: 4.816 Null object

In the place where I grew up, the most common null expression was:
 I'm going to the library. Do you want to come with?

You can see it combines the null expression with the speaker's anticipaion of
their future location.

 -Adriane Moser

Message 2: Re: 4.806 Null-object

2 brief comments:

1. Bill Bennett cites -courir apres- and -cocher avec- (=coucher avec?)
I believe that this is possible with a wide variety of verbs in French,
for example -rester avec....

2. Also, has anyone mentioned the American ... come with, as in

We're going to a party tonight, are you planning to come with?

(or is this where we started?)

 -This is (or was) not in my ideolect, but I have heard myself
using similar connstructions lately, and I don't know where
it's coming from.-


 ----- Keith J. Miller
 Computational Linguistics
 Georgetown University
 millerkgusun.georgetown.edu

 Artificial Intelligence Center
 The MITRE Corporation
 millerkstarbase.mitre.org

 (-*- standard disclaimers -*-)

So far, several persons have hinted at a German origin of Northeastern
American "go with" (e.g., "Can I go with?" = "May I come/go along?"). The
construction in German calls for the infinitive form of a "splittable" verb
(i.e., a conditional preposition-verb compound): _mitkommen_ = /mit+komm-n/
(/with+come-inf./):

 Darf/kann ich mitkommen? May I come along?
 (may/can-1sg. I with+come-inf.)
versus
 Ich komme mit. | I (will) come along.
 (I come-1sg. with) | I am coming along.

Thus, German speakers would be likely to say *"I come with". (Has any of
this survived in American English?) Would they extend this by saying
"May/can I come with?" because *"May/can I withcome?" would be too much of
a stretch?

How is it in Yiddish? Do you say something like "Ken ikh
mitkumen/mitgeyn?" or "Ken ikh kumen/geyn mit?"?

Message 4: Re: 4.828 Can/Can't, Come With

Regarding the discussion of "come/go with":

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and this construction is absolutely
perfect and unmarked for me; as is usually the case in these things, I
had never really thought about it and was astounded to learn that there are
people who don't say it. Although I am of German extraction, neither of
my parents speaks a word of German, and as far as I know it's pretty common
in the Chicago area in general. Is it a midwest thing, maybe? Also,
as for the question of voicing or not voicing the final consonant of "with",
"Do you want to come with" sounds really bizarre with a voiced "th" at the
end, but when I thought about it I realized that the voiced version of "with"
sounds pretty weird to me under any circumstances, even before a word
beginning with a distinctively voiced consonant; I can say it, but it
sounds like an affectation.

While we're on dialect variation, does anybody else out there pronounce
"vanilla" to rhyme with "fella" rather than with "Attilla"? I do, and
have only met a few others who do; most people I ask are dumbfounded
at such a pronunciation. I had always thought of the [i] pronunciation
of "vanilla" as an affectation, and when I actually thought about it and
started listening and looking in dictionaries, I realized I was in a
small minority. Those two vowels, the ones in "bit" and "bet", are
involved in a lot of dialect variation in English; I have a friend who
, when asked to name the white stuff we drink that comes from cows, will
clearly and distinctly say "melk". Any other nonstandard uses of these
two vowels out there?

Dave Kathman
djk1midway.uchicago.edu

Message 5: Re: 4.828 Can/Can't, Come With

I'm from central Pennsylvania, and the "come with" construction is very
foreign to me (even though our area is claimed to have Pennsylvania Dutch
influences in our speech). It's very common here in Minnesota, though, and I
suspect a historical connection with Swedish (rather than German). In
addition to "come with" and "go with", it's also common to hear "bring it
with" (cf. Swed. "ta det med"). Is "bring it with" common elsewhere?

My kids use this construction all the time, but i think that they've
noticed that my wife & I don't. When one of my daughters was 4 years old,
she asked me "Can I come with (big pause, end-of-sentence intonation)
you". She used the construction, but then apparently decided to tailor it
to me dialect.

 ---joe stemberger