Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On Monday, May 17, 2004, at 06:59 PM, Tamas Racsko wrote:

> On 17 May 2004 Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...> wrote:
>
>> Eh?  *"aint do nothing" just ain't English. "ain't doing nothing" does
>> occur in many varieties of English (the formal equivalent is: am/are/is
>> not doing anything).
>
>   I agree with Mark. P. Line who wrote "I'm not interested in
> delineating >>good language<<. I'm interested in delineating actual
> usage."
As it happens, so do I!

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.

I did say "ain't doing nothing" does occur in many varieties of English; I
also observed that in more formal registers of English "am/is/are not
doing anything" is used (both in spoken & written English". I can assure
you as an English speaker for some 63 years, both do occur in _actual_ use.
  I can also assure you that "is not doing anything" is considered by
English speakers to be more formal than "ain't doing nothing" and, indeed,
  is used only in formal contexts. These are objective reports of actual
usage - nothing less, and nothing more.

Where have I mentioned "good language"?

I made no comment on whether "ain't doing nothing" and "is not doing
anything" are 'good' or 'bad' language; nor did I make any comment to
suggest that formal usage is 'good' or 'bad'. I consider such epithets
meaningless in linguistic terms.

>
>> But I utterly fail to see how "ain't....nothing" can possibly be a
>> circumfix. An example of a double negative, certainly - but a
>> circumfix???
>
>   I've answered this to a posting that stated: "[...] a single
> morpheme! (At least, as single as French ne..pas, ne..jamais etc.
> are."
>   I used rhetorical question to give a parallel example in English,
> an example that could make it clear that "ne..jamais" can't be a
> single morpheme.
I think we agree on this one.

Ray
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