Re: was did

On Sep 18, 2:18 am, John Swindle <jcswin...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:28:52 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 17, 2:39 pm, John Swindle <jcswin...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:32:12 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 17, 1:17 am, John Swindle <jcswin...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
. . .
I grew up in North America and still live in the United States
(although not in North America), and I can tell you how to construct
those, or how I do it anyway.  Write an e-mail message.  Use a "was"
construction.  Go back and change it to a "did" construction, but
forget to delete the "was."  Et voila.  (Ett VOY-la.)  I can't imagine
that those are anything but typos.  -

Did you "grow up in NA" before 1980?

You claim to live in Hawai`i and that the construction is not used
there?

Right on both counts! So far as I know.  

It's hard to say that a construction is not used, but "was did" is
certainly unfamiliar.  I suspect that the examples represent careless
writing or editing and that the writers would not use it in their own
speech.

You have however heard it widely, and if others have heard it too then
I'm obviously mistaken.  

Have others heard it too?

The linguists who wrote the AmSp article that analys... found
certainly have ...

(is is, not was did)

Sure.  But "was did" is something else: a typo.

Of course "was did" could work just fine in a context like "Only when
he looked back and saw who it was did he abandon the idea of singing
'The Internationale' at her wedding."-

Of course it's not a typo, or there wouldn't be so many examples so
easily findable. And you have no idea how many more examples there are
with any other verb and any other sequence of auxiliaries.

And the set of examples included no examples of "who it was did he"
literary-style inversions.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: was did
    ... I grew up in North America and still live in the United States ... construction. ... he looked back and saw who it was did he abandon the idea of singing ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: was did
    ... I grew up in North America and still live in the United States ... construction. ... that those are anything but typos. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: was did
    ... I grew up in North America and still live in the United States ... typos. ... in their own speech. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: was did
    ... I grew up in North America and still live in the United States ... construction. ... The linguists who wrote the AmSp article that analys... ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: was did
    ... I grew up in North America and still live in the United States ... construction. ... speech. ...
    (sci.lang)