Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Roger Mills wrote:

> From: dirk elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>
>  In Northern
> >Utah it is common to hear things like "We were (over) to Mom and
> >Dad's this morning" or "He's (over) to the dairy right now". I
> >usually hear (and say) this with the 'over', but I've heard it
> >without as well.>
>
>         In my schooldays, way back when, such locutions were no-nos-- rural,
> stigmatized.  But OK with "to go".
Right. The interesting feature of the preposition 'to' in this
set of contexts, though, is its use as a locative rather than an
allative (motion towards). The use of 'to' with 'go' is thus not
problematic at all.

And I agree on the perception of locative 'to' as rural and
stigmatized. People look at me funny when I use it, which I do
often to great effect; it puts people off their guard--after
all, you wouldn't expect a linguistics PhD to talk like *that*,
now would you? :-)

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu