Innovative Usage Thread

[zompist]

"My and my wife's X" is probably the clearest [...]

That sounds good to me, but it didn't come up in the few minutes I spent thinking about it. It still seems weird to me how much stranger it sounds in the original order.

[zyxw59]

I think the wording I'd produce naturally would be something like "My wife and my's X" or "My wife and mine's X", which looks totally ungrammatical to me written out, but when I say it aloud it feels natural.

[priscianic]

Does no one like "me and my wife's personal Christmas card"?

[KathTheDragon]

I would say "mine and my wife's" which is parallel to things I've actually said.

[Travis B.]

I would put it as me and my wife's myself in everyday speech, even though there probably are those who'd frown on that construction.

[Linguoboy]

I would put it as me and my wife's myself in everyday speech, even though there probably are those who'd frown on that construction.

I'd probably go with this, too.

When I was younger, I adhered strictly to the rule of never putting yourself first and would spontaneously produce examples like "my wife and I's" (very occasionally the pleonastic "my wife and my's"). But at some point I decided I could finally stop listening to my internalised nun's voice.

[Travis B.]

I would put it as me and my wife's myself in everyday speech, even though there probably are those who'd frown on that construction.

I'd probably go with this, too.

When I was younger, I adhered strictly to the rule of never putting yourself first and would spontaneously produce examples like "my wife and I's" (very occasionally the pleonastic "my wife and my's"). But at some point I decided I could finally stop listening to my internalised nun's voice.

Interestingly enough, he and his wife's and she and her wife's sound fine to me, even though I would never, ever say I and my wife's.

[Kuchigakatai]

"Doomscrolling." Just came across this term. The oldest entry in Urban Dictionary, from March this year (2020), defines it as "Obsessively reading social media posts about how utterly fucked we are". Although I like a more depressing definition entered in June: "Doomscrolling is scrolling through Twitter in 2020 becoming sadder the further through you scroll. There is no end."

It is one of those activitity nouns in -ing, like "mountain hiking", which can enter the "be + [word]-ing" construction, even though you don't normally say *I mountain-hiked (or *I doomscrolled). Common collocations include "to be doomscrolling" and "to stop/quit doomscrolling".

[sasasha]

"Doomscrolling." Just came across this term. The oldest entry in Urban Dictionary, from March this year (2020), defines it as "Obsessively reading social media posts about how utterly fucked we are. Although I like a more depressing definition entered in June: "Doomscrolling is scrolling through Twitter in 2020 becoming sadder the further through you scroll. There is no end."

It is one of those activitity nouns in -ing, like "mountain hiking", which can enter the "be + [word]-ing" construction, even though you don't normally say *I mountain-hiked (or *I doomscrolled). Common collocations include "to be doomscrolling" and "to stop/quit doomscrolling".

I doomscrolled all day (true story).

This is way more natural to me than 'I mountain-hiked...'. I wonder why.

[Kuchigakatai]

I doomscrolled all day (true story).

This is way more natural to me than 'I mountain-hiked...'. I wonder why.

Funnily, just minutes after posting that last night, I started suspecting I'm likely quite wrong about the grammar of that kind of word. Don't mind what I said much.

[Raphael]

This is the first time I see that word, but I used to do that a lot. About one or two months ago, I decided to stop it, for my own mental well-being.

[Linguoboy]

I doomscrolled all day (true story).

This is way more natural to me than 'I mountain-hiked...'. I wonder why.

Maybe because it's two syllables rather than four?

So I have white friend from Flint, Michigan who mergers both /er/ and sometimes /ir/ into /ər/. I first became aware of this tendency from St Louis AAVE and I was surprised to hear it from somewhere so geographically and socially distinct. Then today I heard it from a coworker of ours from New England. I don't recall him ever having this feature before. Could it be spreading? Have y'all noticed recently in accents you wouldn't expect?

[Richard W]

I doomscrolled all day (true story).

This is way more natural to me than 'I mountain-hiked...'. I wonder why.

Funnily, just minutes after posting that last night, I started suspecting I'm likely quite wrong about the grammar of that kind of word. Don't mind what I said much.

I think your analysis is right, but the mechanism is depressing. Live grammar works by analogy. These constructs are perfectly acceptable as compounds of gerunds, but the boundary between gerunds and present participles is murky. Once the gerund is familiar, it is likely to be accepted as a present participle, and then it can slot into the progressive tenses if they are viewed as copula plus present participle. It's a bigger jump to the non-progressive, where a barrier is needed to keep the structure verb + object as opposed to object + verb. It's related to the presence of grey areas in grammaticality.

[Travis B.]

So I have white friend from Flint, Michigan who mergers both /er/ and sometimes /ir/ into /ər/. I first became aware of this tendency from St Louis AAVE and I was surprised to hear it from somewhere so geographically and socially distinct. Then today I heard it from a coworker of ours from New England. I don't recall him ever having this feature before. Could it be spreading? Have y'all noticed recently in accents you wouldn't expect?

I have never heard that feature myself - the tendency in the dialect here instead is to innovate new /Vr/ combinations through consonant elisions in the preceding syllable followed by assimilation of the preceding schwa to the vowel that then precedes it.

[alynnidalar]

I doomscrolled all day (true story).

This is way more natural to me than 'I mountain-hiked...'. I wonder why.

Maybe because it's two syllables rather than four?

So I have white friend from Flint, Michigan who mergers both /er/ and sometimes /ir/ into /ər/. I first became aware of this tendency from St Louis AAVE and I was surprised to hear it from somewhere so geographically and socially distinct. Then today I heard it from a coworker of ours from New England. I don't recall him ever having this feature before. Could it be spreading? Have y'all noticed recently in accents you wouldn't expect?

What was the context? Stressed/unstressed etc.?

Given that I'm from not far away from Flint, I'm curious about this!

[Linguoboy]

What was the context? Stressed/unstressed etc.?

It's an unconditional merger.

I wish I could remember which word our other colleague used it in, but I forgot to write it down.

[Moose-tache]

In parts of the rural south this feature is pretty common among white and black speakers. It's associated with low-prestige dialects, and often poor education. I've never heard it extend to /ir/, though. I would probably lose my mind if I heard someone say "Turn up the radio! This is my favorite Turrs for Furrs song!"

[Kuchigakatai]

An innovation of the 2000s which I haven't seen in a long time now is the use of -o to derive action nouns that express a mistake, formed analogically from the -o of "typo". So, "spello" for "misspelling" (due to not knowing the spelling), "thinko" for "mistake (in thinking)", "clicko" for "misclick".

It's always so fun when I come across old comments on YouTube or the like and get these blasts from the past.

[Pabappa]

they still use "scanno" on wiktionary for ocr errors , e.g. "bom" when it should say "born", but this might be jargon.

[Ryusenshi]

Word of the day for me: a stan, meaning an obsessive fan of something (particularly a music genre or artist). Related: to stan, to obsessively follow something. It comes from the song "Stan" by Eminem. Considering how the song ends, this is pretty terrifying.