Re: Many a H. A. Gleason

Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
>
> > Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
> > >
> > > "António Marques" <m.ap@xxxxxxx> wrote ...
> > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I have a translation of 'An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics', by
> > > > H. A. Gleason, Jr. The sleeve says he studied at the NY State College of
> > > > Agriculture, having eventually taken his PhD in Linguistics and moved to
> > > > Toronto.
> > > >
> > > > Now, there was a remarkable botanist named Henry Allan Gleason
> > > > (http://www.goshen.edu/bio/Musci/Alpha3.html), also from NY. Does any
> > > > one know if they're related?
> > >
> > > I would be surprised. HAG Jr apparently grew up in the South. He uses the
> > > schwa-like nucleus in words like <bird> and, when reading aloud to folks
> > > back home, automatically substitutes <you all> for <you> when the plural is
> > > indicated.
> >
> > Do you know him from Hartford, Toronto, or El Paso? I don't recall his
> > having any particular regional characteristics, but I was only in his
> > presence for a week. (I don't think he was at any of the three LACUSes I
> > went to.)
>
> I don't personally know him, of course, but passages implying a Southern
> upbringing can be found in IntroDesc Ling (rev. ed., 1961), esp. pp. 426-7:

When you reported his speech, I assumed you knew what you were talking
about. You seem, however, like Rush Limbaugh in the words of Al Franken,
to have pulled it out of your ***.

> "... For example, I commonly use /yúwOHl/ as a plural pronoun contrasting
> with the singular /yúw/. This is restricted to colloquial situations. ...
> Not infrequently when reading aloud I say /yúwOHl/ when the context demands
> it, though <you> is written. ..."

I've never encountered a true "you-all" user who pronounces it in two
syllables. It rhymes with "yawl," and is often eye-dialect-spelled
<y'all>.

> More remarkable perhaps is G.'s explanation of code numbers for Cree
> paradigms on p. 117, where he renders 2p singular as 'thou', but 2p plural
> as 'you all'. I can't imagine a non-Southerner using anything but 'ye' in
> this situation.

Is there, perhaps, a note somewhere in the front that he chose "you all"
as a device for disambiguating the pronoun "you"?

Is it possible that he used "you all" to distinguish the plural from the
dual "you two"?

> After all this discussion in the thread, we still haven't established
> whether the linguist is the son of the botanist. I am still doubtful, as
> the botanist seems to have had no connection to the South. The linguist,
> however, could well be identical to the Appalachian Baptist fellow who
> sometimes goes by "Allan".

It seems quite clear to me that Al Gleason the linguist is the son of
the botanist at the Bronx Botanical Gardens 1920-50 and the grandson of
the botanist who collected mosses. His bookplate with a Syriac
inscription all but clinches the identification.

No "Appalachian Baptist fellow" has been previously mentioned; Goshen
College is a Mennonite/Anabaptist college in Indiana, neither of which
have anything to do with either the Appalachians or Baptists.

Incidentally, the NYS College of Agriculture is Cornell University, a
state school, very appropriate for a New Yorker interested in pursuing a
career in botany like his father and grandfather.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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