Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On 19 May Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...> wrote:

> That's precisely why I pointed out that *"ain't do nothing" does
> not occur in any variety of English. I'm delineating actual usage -
> it ain't used.
  Actually I don't know English, I simply use it. Therefore I'm
really handicapped when I'm arguing with you about the English
language. For this reason, I'm glad that John Cowan "supported" me.

  On the other side, I used an English parallelism to a French
double negative phrase to demonstrate for Anglosphones that these
phrases are not single "linguistic units". It was a simple example
and I think it was intelligible. From this point of view, the
present state of "ain't do nothing" is indifferent.

  On the third side, you wrote on 17 May: >>"ain't doing nothing"
does occur in many varieties of English (the formal equivalent is:
am/are/is not doing anything).<<  Probably you've omitted the
particle "not" in this sentence by an accidental mistyping, but I
took it as it is, i.e. the opposition to your above statement:
>>*"ain't do nothing" does not occur in any variety of English<<.

> Where have I mentioned "good language"?
  For me, it was an inherent statement in your argument. I do hear
_vernacular_ Anglophones saying "ain't do nothing". If they use it,
it have to be English. Assuming this, the word "English" in your
statement >>*"aint do nothing" just ain't English<< means "part of
the set of idioms I can accept as English" for me. Thus, in my
apprehension, you've divided English into an acceptable and a non-
acceptable part, i.e. into "good language" and "bad language".

  (If it's not English, in what language does Eric Clapton sing his
song "Ain't nobody's business if I do"..?)

> I consider such epithets meaningless in linguistic terms.
  I think we agree on this one.

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