A fair point!
And treat every smear of Democrats on my favorite “news” channel (FOX “News”) as if it were actual news reporting!
“I miss you not being here” – Sounds like an insult but it means the opposite.
“I can’t stop my cat from not scratching the furniture”
Still, it isn’t just a matter of the internet making it possible for anyone to send their grammatically bad writing out into the world. The examples I gave of participle errors were all spoken in various contexts. Neither is it a matter of age as far as I can see. The person who used to say “the job’s been ran” was a coworker of mine in the early 2000s, and as best I could guess, had a fairly similar background/education to mine. “I wish he could have saw…” came from a prominent talk show host, off mike. “The spiders have ate the flies” came from an NPR host on air.
For some of my examples, check out this NYT article
. Unfortunately it may be paywalled.
I think this phrase is indeed an insult.
Remove the ‘not’, which leaves “I miss you being here.” In other words, “I wish you were here.”
Put the ‘not’ back in. In other words, “I wish you were not here.”
What am I missing?
That like
Paris in the
the spring
Most people will not actually parse the sentence literally word for word, but simply (and mistakenly) accept it as fitting the template of the trite “Wish you were here” without further analysis.
Separately …
The fact there are other common human languages where a double negative does not negate the negation, but rather strengthens it, shows that there’s some underlying innate mental model where that sentence “naturally” interprets as “wish you were here.”
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. The grammatical pattern you’re talking about has been standard in several dialects of English for centuries. You’re not observing anything new here. Notably, it’s standard in Appalachian English.
Disregard, coding trouble. Will repost later…
In dialects, sure. But why, now, are there so many examples of people without the cultural background associated with those dialects using those grammatical patterns?
That’s what’s new. Or new-ish, given that it’s been trending for two ir three decades. Walter Cronkite would never EVER have said “the spiders have ate the flies”, but today talk show hosts do.
I had to work for a Yeoman 2nd Class some years ago. This guy was not the best example of that rating. He insisted on putting the following blurb in sailor of the month/quarter/year award letters to be sent to said awardees’ parents:
With your support, your son could not have attained this honor.
That’s only one example of that jackass’s stupidity. He finally got his comeuppance about a year after I had to work under him. God, it was glorious when Karma kicked him in the nads.
How do you know they are not speaking in their own dialect?
I’d suggest that one of the differences from 20 or 50 years ago is we’re all more exposed to more dialects due to the spread of internet & social media. Separate from the vast, vast increase in non-elite non-professional speech that we’re also all exposed to. The multiplicative effect of both those things supercharges the rate of spread of dialect, for good or for ill. So even though Person X doesn’t hail from Appalachia, they may have picked up some of it along the way.
As to professionals using “non-standard” speech, I’ll put it down to a conscious effort to not sound fake to their audience. If the entire cadre of show-biz talking heads sounded like William F. Buckley, most of us would reject that as inauthentic and off-putting. Well, maybe not most of us here at the dope, but most of their target audience. One of the innovations in modern marketing in general and show-biz in particular is the recognition that your target market is not all white, cishet middle class with 2.2 adorable kids, one of each gender.
Waiting for the whole story…
Probably a combination of fewer barriers against people from that cultural background entering media jobs, and more people adopting constructions that they find useful/aesthetic as they’re exposed to a wider range of dialects, due to fewer barriers against people from historically disfavored cultural backgrounds entering media jobs.
Both good things, IMO.
There was another sailor, Yeoman Third Class, whose life the aforementioned YN2 was making uncomfortable. Well, the YN3 made YN2 on his first shot at the advancement exam and YN1 on his first attempt at that exam. And then he was transferred to southern California. The YN2 when it was his turn to transfer got orders to a unit in Honolulu so he was quite excited. And then he got a call from the former YN3, now YN1. Turns out that the unit, a regional unit, needed him to work in Honolulu. He was now the YN2’s supervisor.
Here’s two things that bug me:
“I’mma…” and “X be like…” I see these being thrown all around the internet and it annoys me. Yeah, I get it. People be like, “Hey, it’s how I talk. Deal with it.” But that doesn’t mean I like it. I’mma go crazy.
Looks like AAVE to me.
That’s where I first saw it. And if that’s how they want to talk, fine. They don’t need my permission. But it still annoys me.
William Safire told a story about an acquaintance who told him “I’ve missed not seeing you.” Safire launched into an explanation of how he SHOULD have said it, and the guy said “No, I had it right in the first first place. Now I remember why.”
Credit to Unca Cecil for passing that one along.
By their use of General American pronunciation patterns. Normally, if someone hails from Appalachia and uses nonstandard grammar, wouldn’t they have a noticeable accent, to other Americans?