A Linguistic Question
Jul. 25th, 2004 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThis is something I'm thinking about bringing up on the American Dialect Society list, but I'd like to do a little unscientific research before asking the bigwigs.
I find that I use the compound pronouns "who-all" and "what-all" fairly often in speech, and occasionally in writing. They feel to me like compound words - hence the hyphenation - rather than phrases. As far as meaning goes, a question like, "Who-all showed up at the party?" asks for a complete roster, where "Who showed up?" could be satisfied by naming a few notables. I use them in questions and in negative statements - "I don't know what-all that boy got up to!" - but only rarely if at all in affirmative statements. They have a definite colloquial feel to them, and actually strike me as more Southern than anything else. (My own dialect is of the "North Midlands" family, but with some Southern influence.)
So, a few questions for anyone who cares to comment. Do you use these phrases? (And what about "where-all", "how-all", "when-all"?) If you do, do they strike you as compound words or as phrases? Do you interpret their meanings differently than I do? Do you ever use them in affirmative statements? Any other thoughts any of you might offer would also be appreciated.
I find that I use the compound pronouns "who-all" and "what-all" fairly often in speech, and occasionally in writing. They feel to me like compound words - hence the hyphenation - rather than phrases. As far as meaning goes, a question like, "Who-all showed up at the party?" asks for a complete roster, where "Who showed up?" could be satisfied by naming a few notables. I use them in questions and in negative statements - "I don't know what-all that boy got up to!" - but only rarely if at all in affirmative statements. They have a definite colloquial feel to them, and actually strike me as more Southern than anything else. (My own dialect is of the "North Midlands" family, but with some Southern influence.)
So, a few questions for anyone who cares to comment. Do you use these phrases? (And what about "where-all", "how-all", "when-all"?) If you do, do they strike you as compound words or as phrases? Do you interpret their meanings differently than I do? Do you ever use them in affirmative statements? Any other thoughts any of you might offer would also be appreciated.
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Re: All the Alls
Date: 2004-07-25 05:41 pm (UTC)I'm definitely taking this to ADS.
Re: All the Alls
Date: 2004-07-25 06:58 pm (UTC)It's not just the pause, present in "you all" and absent in "you-all," it's that the two sets have a different emphasis (as syllables would). In the compound "you-all," the first word has the emphasis; in the phrase "you all," the emphasis falls on the second word.
That's why you would write them differently, to visually differentiate between the two.
Oh, my. That's yet another argument for compounding who-all and what-all, too, isn't it? *beams*