watcha gonna do?
2005-07-05 19:59:14.238291+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
A Capital Idea has a link to Ruth Walker: Mebbe gonna hafta get useta 'gotta', in which she muses that perhaps some of our slang contractions aren't just sloppy diction, but actually provide words with more specific meanings:
In other words, the temporal "gonna" is not just sloppy diction and muddled thinking. It's different from the more carefully enunciated spatial "going to." No one would say, "I'm gonna the gym tonight." In a century or two, who knows? This construction may be standard written English. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it, as my mom used to say.
She also notices the difference between "let us" and "let's" (the latter being inclusive), which reminds me of a Yankee of my acquaintance who was trying to justify the use of the singular "y'all" by noting that "all y'all" is indeed a valid phrase. It's been a few years since I've been to the hollers, and I was a Yankee to begin with anyway, but I believe that the difference is that "y'all" is a plural second person, and "all y'all" is refers to every plural second person in the context.