Re: x > f sound change

Re "should of"

No, I don't think the difference is orthographical at all. The interesting
thing that struck me the first time I heard it (I can remember it - it was
only a few years back) was that it was a wonderful example of linguistic
change in action across many simultaneous fronts: chiefly syntactic and
phonologic. The syntactic stream phonologised as /Sud(schwa)v/ was not being
analysed as verb+auxiliary, but instead verb+particle or preposition, in
effect, similar to "phone up". Do we now see the auxiliary "have"
metamorphosing into "of"? Will we be able to say "Of you seen my new car?"
for instance, or will the change have /-v/ into of /-v/ remain only in
unstressed positions?

Mike Poxon
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <fortytwo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: x > f sound change


> Michael Poxon wrote:
> > Something I've noticed very much recently, certainly in British English;
not
> > just sound change, but syntactic change too. The ending /schwa+v/ found
in
> > "could've", "should've" etc., is being interpreted as "of" instead of a
> > contraction of "have", and the emphatic response articulated as "You
should
> > of!" instead of "You should have" and so on. My kids (13 and 16)
consider
> > this perfect grammatical.
>
> _of_ and -'ve are homophonous.  "You should of" is merely an
> orthographic variant of "You should've", altho the fact that it's often
> spelt that way indicates that "should've" is now seen as a single unit
> rather than a contraction of "should have", much as the spelling "ya'll"
> indicates that it's no longer seen as a contraction of "you all".  "You
> shouldn't!" is grammatical, too, showing that the use of the contraction
> isn't unusual.
>
> --
> "No just cause can be advanced by terror"
> ICQ: 18656696
> AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

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