Re: was did

On Sep 17, 12:55 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 16, 12:55 am, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In googling for more examples of past participle “did”, I came across
a disturbing number of cases where “was did” seemed to replace
standard “did”.  A few examples

Entirely different phenomenon, developing out of the "is-is"
construction, which unfortunately I am not able to produce, in which
the first _is_ is the copula and the second _is_ carries the tense and
aspect. Back in 1989 (I know because it was on a Milwaukee call-in
radio program one of the days i was commuting to UW-M) I heard "is was
going to," but I cannot reconstruct the utterance.

I was not suggesting they were the same thing, just that one came to
light while searching for the other. The "was did" business is
morphology, but here there is something funny with the syntax
I'm willing to believe that "was did" (or BE DO) develops in some way
analogous to "is is", but as for "develops out of"...I'd like to see
you go through the steps.

- What was did Andrew Johnson’s loyalty oath say?
- What was did Malcolm X learn at school?
- What was did families  do for fun in the 30s?
- What practical use do I have for this hill that was did not
previously exist when I chose this relatively level lot?
- We arrived on a freezing cold night to an empty restaurant that was
did not have out (reserved) table ready.
- As a sample return mission, there is no way that it can be
considered a scaled down Phobos 2, given that that was did not involve
sample return.
- She began to tell me that what I was did was very wrong and that I
was very bad.
- Two different times I was did pictures under contract to him, and
both times he reneged on the contracts.
- It was the opinion of her contemporaries that she would have
recovered from this illness if she had fought against it, but she was
did not want to.

This has unsettled me almost as much as my discoveries about “whom” a
few years ago. Can all these be just the result of badly edited
typing? or is there some new development in Aux that I hadn’t noticed?

It goes back at least 25 years (more than a linguistic generation).
And it's not confined to a small area of the US -- you can hear it all
the time on national call-in shows.

Well, fortunately I don't have to listen to those (or even NZ talk
radio). But if it is as common as that, I must see if some linguist
has discussed it somewhere.

Ross Clark
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: was did
    ... standard “did”. ... construction, which unfortunately I am not able to produce, in which ... Back in 1989 (I know because it was on a Milwaukee call-in ... Two different times I was did pictures under contract to him, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: was did
    ... Entirely different phenomenon, ... construction, which unfortunately I am not able to produce, in which ... Back in 1989 (I know because it was on a Milwaukee call-in ... Two different times I was did pictures under contract to him, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: was did
    ... Entirely different phenomenon, ... construction, which unfortunately I am not able to produce, in which ... Back in 1989 (I know because it was on a Milwaukee call-in ... Two different times I was did pictures under contract to him, ...
    (sci.lang)