I’m sure that some of you are cunning linguists, so I’m asking for your help on a question. In fact, if you want to forward this on to others in order to find an answer, I welcome that as well.
B and B’s father (whom I’ll call J) (and if you don’t know who B and J are, it’s not really important, but it’s part of the whole L narrative)…
Let me start over for clarity. B and J both have an idiosyncratic grammar usage that I have never heard anyone use, or heard of it being a part of a regional dialect. They use negative contractions (isn’t, doesn’t, aren’t, etc) as positives in specific circumstances.
For instance, the wife and I were talking with J one night, and he said “I had a golf tournament the next day, and so didn’t my wife.” In the context it was clear that he meant “… so did my wife.” As near as I can tell, J does this every time he means to say someone else also did something. B does it a lot, but not every time, which leads me to believe he learned it from J.
I once asked B about it, pointing out where he’d even written it that way on a Facebook posting, and he said he had no idea that he did that. He agreed that it’s clearly incorrect usage, and said he’d have to watch what he said from then on, but he still does it maybe once in every three or four times that it would come up.
I've never heard either of them say something like "I wasn't at the store" when they meant they were. But both will say "I was at the store and so wasn't he." It's only when they are including someone else that they do this. But they use it correctly when they say "I was at the store but she wasn't" or "I wasn't there and neither was he."
J was in the Navy for 30 plus years, and apparently among all their travels they spent a great deal of time in Spain, so I wonder if something regional there would have influenced them. I picked up the habit of saying things like “I’ll go with” from the way sentences are structured in German (though the first time I became aware of that usage was from some young adult book I read when I was 9 or 10.)
So anyway, the question is: have any of you heard of this usage of negative contractions to mean a positive? I’m really curious how something like this would have started.
B and B’s father (whom I’ll call J) (and if you don’t know who B and J are, it’s not really important, but it’s part of the whole L narrative)…
Let me start over for clarity. B and J both have an idiosyncratic grammar usage that I have never heard anyone use, or heard of it being a part of a regional dialect. They use negative contractions (isn’t, doesn’t, aren’t, etc) as positives in specific circumstances.
For instance, the wife and I were talking with J one night, and he said “I had a golf tournament the next day, and so didn’t my wife.” In the context it was clear that he meant “… so did my wife.” As near as I can tell, J does this every time he means to say someone else also did something. B does it a lot, but not every time, which leads me to believe he learned it from J.
I once asked B about it, pointing out where he’d even written it that way on a Facebook posting, and he said he had no idea that he did that. He agreed that it’s clearly incorrect usage, and said he’d have to watch what he said from then on, but he still does it maybe once in every three or four times that it would come up.
I've never heard either of them say something like "I wasn't at the store" when they meant they were. But both will say "I was at the store and so wasn't he." It's only when they are including someone else that they do this. But they use it correctly when they say "I was at the store but she wasn't" or "I wasn't there and neither was he."
J was in the Navy for 30 plus years, and apparently among all their travels they spent a great deal of time in Spain, so I wonder if something regional there would have influenced them. I picked up the habit of saying things like “I’ll go with” from the way sentences are structured in German (though the first time I became aware of that usage was from some young adult book I read when I was 9 or 10.)
So anyway, the question is: have any of you heard of this usage of negative contractions to mean a positive? I’m really curious how something like this would have started.
I'm from the northeast (Upstate NY) and yes, I've heard the negative contraction used in a positive sense in inclusive sorts of statements. It's not common, and I think it's usually a colloquialism - folks using it in their every day talk amongst friends, but they'd rarely use it in more formal situations.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds about right, bikinifool, and J did grow up in Boston.
DeleteI am from Brazil and here we use many negatives contractions to mean positive. Maybe is something wiht languages of latin origens
ReplyDelete