The future of the English second person plural (was Re:Aquestion)

John Cowan wrote:

> > This is in fact how Southerners deal with the fact that the standard language
> > lacks the distinction.  George W. Bush, the son of the former President and
> > the likely Republican nominee for the next President, was giving a speech
> > yesterday in which he addressed the crowd as "you all".
>
> Do you have the context?
It was during the speech he gave at the Iowa straw-poll which was broadcast
on CSPAN.

> After all, "you all" is used in the
> standard language as a rhetorical variant of "all of you"
> (dialectal form:  "all of y'all").
True, but in the way he was pronouncing it, it was clearly "YOU all",  not
"you ALL", to the extent that it was pronounced almost more as /'ju:@l/.
For me, if I were giving a speech addressing an entire group, I would only
use the latter so as to emphasize the totality of the statement, which he was
clearly not doing, but rather just the plurality of the people present. (He seemed
to be addressing more his adherents than the crowd in general, of which his
adherents were only the most sizeable part.)

(If it were merely plural and I were using the Standard dialect, I would have
to say just "you").


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
AIM: Deuterotom ICQ: 4315704
<http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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