2+pl+poss

[trochee]

A post today in the uw community requested the help of all the readers by saying "I need your guys help".

Now this expression made my linguistic ears perk up. I -- having grown up in the American South -- would have said "y'all's help" or (in a more formal setting) "your help". The problem this querent presents has to do with a car accident, but recalls a frequent further problem of morphological structure -- the productive affix denoting possessive ('s orthographically) and the productive affix denoting plural (s) have the same phonological realization (/ɨz/ or /z/ or /s/, depending on its context). We run into all sorts of orthographic problems with this to begin with on more common nouns: the fox's den, and the foxes' den are both rules that need to be learned separately.

But it struck me as an interesting and challenging problem when combined with English's ugly syncretism with respect to number in the second person, not to mention its non-compositionality when combining the possessive morpheme with pronouns (I/my, we/our, but Bob/Bob's, etc).

How else might we try to do what the uw querent wanted? I can imagine:

• I need youse guys' help -- New Jersey?
• I need your guys help -- Washington, apparently
• I need y'all's help -- the American South?
• I need all y'all's help -- the American South ?(for some reason this one seems particularly felicitous to me)
• I need your help -- CNN/NPR standard

Any other suggestions?

Comments

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

I would say "you guys'" typically

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I take it that's pronounced /yu gɑjzɨz/ ?

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

Thereabouts. My IPA is rough around the edges (and it can stay that way, huzzah!), but it feels about right. Definitely looks like the right phonemes/morphemes. It's the midwestern "you guys" with a possessive marker tacked on the end.

[kirinqueen.livejournal.com]

I understood the "y'all/all y'all" variants to actually express something like one or two people for the former and more than that for the latter. I can't remember where I came across that, but since you've actually lived somewhere this is used, I'd count you as more of an authority on it. :-) I would also say "I need you guys' help" (more like /ju gaIz:/ than /gaIziz/) if I didn't opt for the CNN/NPR standard. (Forgive my lack of IPA Unicode skills.)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I hadn't considered a phonological lengthening of the /z/, but that's probably how it's realized phonetically anyway.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

oh, and also the 2nd-person-trial+ interpretation for all y'all explains why I prefer all y'all's help to y'all's, although I still use you for the singular. I suspect it varies by region, and I was raised in a dialect-merge zone (Atlanta).

Regarding IPA skills, I just use gucharmap.

[elwe.livejournal.com]

In my dialect (Louisville, KY) it's a slightly variation on "I need y'all's help": "I need your all's help"

your guys

[lapartera.livejournal.com]

And then there's the possibility that "your guys" was a typo that should have been "you guys"!! A finger slip? Or -- the help of your guys rather than your gals? Whoa!

[(Anonymous)]

I've heard "I need yers help" in Philadelphia (southwest side). Pronounce "I neejerz help"