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"Pleonasms are abundant."
Pleonasms are abundant. "I done done it" (have done it or did do it). "Durin' the while." "In this day and time." "I thought it would surely, undoubtedly turn cold." "A small, little bitty hole." "Jane's a tol'able big, large, fleshy woman." "I ginerally, usually take a dram mornin's." "These ridges is might' nigh straight up and down, and, as the feller said, perpendic'lar."
Everywhere in the mountains we hear of biscuit-bread, ham-meat, rifle-gun, rock-clift, ridin'-critter, cow-brute, man-person, women-folks, preacher-man, granny-woman and neighbor-people. In this category belong the famous double-barreled pronouns: we-all and you-all in Kentucky and you-uns and we-uns in Carolina and Tennessee. (I have even heard such locution as this: "Let's we-uns all go over to youerunses house.")
That is from the often quite interesting Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers, by Horace Kephart, recommended to me by a loyal MR reader.
To think that "cow-brute" is a pleonasm is truly very excellent. I might add that the discussion of the triple and quadruple and indeed quintuple negative is of interest: "I ain't never seen no men-folks of no kind do no washin'."
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 10, 2009 at 04:28 PM in History | Permalink
Comments
I ain't never never read no better post, never.
Posted by: nick at Jan 10, 2009 4:41:21 PM
My favorite is Pittsburgh's "yinz."
Posted by: Dave at Jan 10, 2009 4:57:37 PM
Why do most English speakers refuse to use y'all. It's simple, obvious and fills a need. I'm a northerner living in Chicago and I find myself using because there is no better alternative
Posted by: db at Jan 10, 2009 5:44:06 PM
Only a yankee would write a book like that.
Posted by: luke at Jan 10, 2009 6:23:58 PM
This thread needs more Captain Pleonasm:
http://drboli.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/captain-pleonasm-and-the-return-of-the-brevitrons/
http://drboli.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/captain-pleonasm-faces-the-future/
Posted by: MikeF at Jan 10, 2009 6:29:49 PM
i'm gonna report all of yall to the department of redundancy department!
Posted by: pants at Jan 10, 2009 8:10:13 PM
Pleonasms are abundant. (but not plentiful...more than many, but not many, many occurrences...in the end, less than the pleonasm fans report)
Really? Really really? Most languages prolly more complex than these technical definitions presume.
"I done done it" ...is poetry an I do likes it...musical...not stomped lifeless by the rule-governed...who have no ears for any difference from this: "I done it."
(have done it or did do it)...iz so boring. Isso...is not really doing it.
Wiki was not a help here...get busy you wordsmiths and rewrite that entry.
Posted by: calmo at Jan 10, 2009 9:44:28 PM
Tyler,
Did you catch the author's bio? I figured you would get a kick out of it...
World class librarian turns hillbilly hermit.
Posted by: Alan at Jan 10, 2009 10:02:20 PM
Is "yinz" from Pittsburgh? I went to high school in rural Western NC, and had always thought it native to that region. Though, down there the pronunciation is closer to "yuhns."
(the contraction of "you ones," for all those who don't know. As in: "Would any of yuhns be up for a game of baseball?)
I have also been fascinated by the the use of non-specific pronouns ("it" rather than "he" or "she") to refer to both infants and the elderly.
Posted by: Aaron at Jan 10, 2009 10:26:09 PM
I have personally heard us-uns as well as we-uns in western NC. "You-uns come see us-uns soon, now."
Posted by: SixWingedSeraph at Jan 10, 2009 10:49:17 PM
Don't you a going an maken fun of my people. Thems my clan and I'm proud of themuns.
WW2 brought people from all over to California and I grew up hearing this kind of talk.
I need to note that some of the best people I know are from these areas. Great folks and great friends.
Now the immigration into California is from all over the world but I am not in elementary school and can't pick up the new sounds and words coming into use. Tis sad.
Posted by: dilbert dogbert at Jan 10, 2009 11:05:18 PM
I would humbly submit that "rifle-gun" is no more a neoplasm than "shotgun." Rifling refers to the spiral grooves that may be cut into the barrel of a gun, not the gun itself. Many guns are not rifled and have smooth bores, such as shotguns.
Posted by: apikoros at Jan 10, 2009 11:21:01 PM
Mmm. Pleonastic. Love that word.
Posted by: Milena Thomas at Jan 11, 2009 12:38:08 AM
I've always been entertained by the Utahn predilection for saying we "might could" or "oughta should" do something.
Posted by: D. Watson at Jan 11, 2009 1:55:29 AM
"Pleonasms are abundant."
A common example is "tuna fish." Funny though, we seldom hear "chicken bird."
Posted by: Frank de Libero at Jan 11, 2009 1:59:58 AM
This Pleonasm:
I done done it
is no more plonastic than the regular English
I did do it. or Do not do it.
or any regular use of the word 'do'. In linguistic theory, the unnecessary 'do' is a case-taking element, and the other 'do' (or whatever other verb you insert) carries the semantic meaning, even if it's as vague as 'to do'. So grammatically this is not redundant. Basically I think in there dialect 'have' in this case is glossed as 'done', which combines with the participular use of 'done' to create an apparent pleonasm.
Is the use of two 'that's in "I think that that's a different kettle of fish" a pleonasm?
The multiple negative, likewise:
I ain't never seen no men-folks of no kind do no washin'.
is not a semantic multiple negative as it would be if you added logical NOTs everyewhere you see a 'no' or an 'ain't'. In many grammars, such as French, the negative is not a property of the individual word but a property of the sentence. Then negative semantic elements in the sentence and the case-taking element are separately marked with negative words.
I don't really think that the products of grammatical rules which demand extra-semantic elements should be seen as pleonasms in the same way that semantically redundant language are; it's at least a very different sort of pleonasm.
Posted by: John at Jan 11, 2009 2:03:02 AM
I'm not sure that "cow-brute" is a pleonasm. A cow is female, a bull is male, so what's the singular of cattle, if you don't know what sex it is? Round these parts (UK & NZ), the correct term is a cattle-beast.
(Admittedly, common usage is lazy, and many would call it a cow and hope no farmers are around to question their ability to tell boy from girl.)
Posted by: Jez Weston at Jan 11, 2009 4:12:08 AM
I've always been entertained by the Utahn predilection for saying we "might could" or "oughta should" do something.
The double modal is discussed in the book Professor Cowen linked.
"Might could" has an obvious and distinct meaning from simply "might" or "could." Yes, the meaning is similar to that of "might possibly" or "probably could," where one modal is replaced with an adverb (though probably and might have somewhat different connotations) or "might be able," which is not always seen as a double modal, but I see no reason to object to the linguistic structure. It fills a purpose.
It's also pretty common in Scots and Scots English; presumably why it shows up in the Scotch-Irish patterns mentioned in the book.
Posted by: John Thacker at Jan 11, 2009 4:58:38 AM
I wonder if they came up with "rational choice."
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Jan 11, 2009 7:12:39 AM
I just ordered a copy from Amazon, used copy $4.50 in good condition. If anybody is interested, there is still one more at the same price.
"Might could" or "oughta should" maybe consider it.
Posted by: Margaret at Jan 11, 2009 8:32:38 AM
This reminds me of John Nash's characters statement in 'A Beautiful Mind': "Terrified, mortified, petrified, stupified by you".
Posted by: Lance at Jan 11, 2009 12:59:30 PM
Ya'll are hittin' a might close to home with this heah post...
Posted by: Joe at Jan 11, 2009 2:03:26 PM
John,
At least the quintuple negative is still logically a negative. It is when you have those even-numbered
negatives that want to be logically negative that you have our real mountain folk coming on like a bunch
of French or Russian speakers, where negatives are negative logically even if they are even-numbered.
Damned furriners!
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jan 11, 2009 2:21:06 PM
I've never heard the word 'Pleonasm' before. it's a good word in Australia we use tautology, from my reading of the dictionary they mean the same thing.
Posted by: Stephen Williams at Jan 11, 2009 4:33:55 PM
apikoros is correct. What's missing is the "d" at the end. It should be rifled gun.
Y'all can make fun of us Scots-Irish all you care to, be we do know our guns!
Posted by: Donna B. at Jan 11, 2009 11:07:11 PM
