Re: bless (adj)

Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
> So here in the southern US we seem to be in the middle of a change that
> I'm not sure how to categorize:  the bare word "bless" is acquiring the
> meaning of its participle "blessed" (something that has been blessed).
> So far I've only seen it in the set phrase "have a bless day", where it
> obviously came from a merger of the /t/ and /d/ in "blessed day"
> /blEstdei/, but I've now seen it written down in -edless form several
> times, and I can't help but wonder how long it will be before this new
> meaning of unsuffixed "bless" becomes lexicalized in GAE. It may already
> have that status in AAVE . . .
>
> Thoughts?  Anyone else run across this?
Maybe it won't become lexicalized. I've seen people write
"suppose to" and "manufacture" in place of "supposed to"
and "manufacturer" for years, but they are still considered
to be mistakes.

--Ph. D.

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