I tells you(ya).

[Sin Jeong-hun]

I hear this phrase often. The verb form of tell is that of third
singular person. Why is it so? I think I've never heard other case in
which third singular person verb form is used for the subject 'I'. Is
this a special case? Or is there any other examples like this?

[John Dean]

It's an attempt at humour. Making deliberate grammatical errors is often
thought funny. No, I don't know either.
I've a suspicion this one might have originated with the cartoon
character Popeye. I certainly remember him saying things like "That's
all I can stands cos I can't stands no more."
--
John Dean
Oxford

[Django Cat]

John Dean wrote:

> Sin Jeong-hun wrote:
> > I hear this phrase often. The verb form of tell is that of third
> > singular person. Why is it so? I think I've never heard other case
> > in which third singular person verb form is used for the subject
> > 'I'. Is this a special case? Or is there any other examples like
> > this?
>
> It's an attempt at humour.

Not necessarily; we bumped into a friend on the market in Glossop up
here on the Derbyshire/Cheshire (UK) border just this afternoon and,
telling a story, she said something like 'so I goes and I tells him,
it's not on'... It wasn't an attempt at humour, just part of her
natural speech pattern. (But it stood out to me after a morning back
in the ESL/EFL classroom)

Non-standard, dialectical, pig-ignorant... take your pick.

DC

[gul...@googlemail.com]

It's like the line in the Beastie Boys song: "You gots to stop tellin'
him how I stole your car, you know? It just ain't fair."

I also hear "I gots to go" a lot, mainly from people who grew up in
black neighborhoods.

[John Dean]

Django Cat wrote:
> John Dean wrote:
>
>> Sin Jeong-hun wrote:
>>> I hear this phrase often. The verb form of tell is that of third
>>> singular person. Why is it so? I think I've never heard other case
>>> in which third singular person verb form is used for the subject
>>> 'I'. Is this a special case? Or is there any other examples like
>>> this?
>>
>> It's an attempt at humour.
>
> Not necessarily; we bumped into a friend on the market in Glossop up
> here on the Derbyshire/Cheshire (UK) border just this afternoon and,
> telling a story, she said something like 'so I goes and I tells him,
> it's not on'... It wasn't an attempt at humour, just part of her
> natural speech pattern.

Sure. I could trade you anecdote for anecdote, all to do with what
people regard as proper and standard usage. But I'm pretty sure *this*
one (I tells ya) is an attempt at humour. If I'm wrong do excuse I, me
duck.
--
John Dean
Oxford

[Raymond S. Wise]

In its entry for "get," *The American Heritage Dictionary,* 4th ed.,
attempts to explain how the form "gots" came about:

From
http://www.bartleby.com/61/84/G0108400.html

"In colloquial use and in numerous nonstandard varieties of American
English, the past tense form _got_ has the meaning of the present. This
arose probably by dropping the helping verb _have_ from the past
perfects _have got, has got: We've got to go, we've got a lot of
problems became We got to go, we got a lot of problems._ The reanalysis
of _got_ as a present-tense form has led to the creation of a third
singular _gots_ in some varieties of English, especially African
American Vernacular English."

The companion Web page to the Public Broadcasting Service's *Do You
Speak American?* discusses a dialect in which the third person plural
would take a verb with an "s" at the end:

From
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/smokies/

"Many of the differences in the Smoky Mountain dialect can be
attributed to the linguistic legacy that was brought by the original
founders to the area. Numerous early white settlers who came to the
Smokies in the late 1700s were of Scotch-Irish descent. In the language
these settlers carried over from Ireland and Scotland, adding an _-s_
to third person plural verbs was an acceptable grammatical feature. As
a result, we find many mountain speakers using constructions such as
'The people that _goes_ there' -- not because they are speaking
incorrect grammar, but because this form is similar to the way of
marking agreement with certain types of verbs and plural nouns in
Scotch-Irish English."

In some dialectal usage, the third person singular form of the verb
does not take a terminal "s":

From
http://www.pbs.org/speak/education/curriculum/college/aae/

"*3rd person singular -s deletion: 'He jump high.'
"Another common feature of AAE is omitting the _-s_ with verbs
following a third person singular subject (compare Mainstream English
_I jump, you jump, we jump, they jump_--but _she jump*s*_)."

--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

[joetaxpayer]

John Dean wrote:

I'm with you on this, although I lean toward the quote aspect more than
the intentional bad grammar. Yogi Berra was quoted as saying 'the future
ain't what it used to be'. On the rare occasion that one wishes to
convey this feeling, given the right audience, the quote works.
JOE

[John Dean]

You ain't just whistlin Dixie, Pixie.
--
John Dean
Oxford

[Mike Lyle]

John Dean wrote:
> joetaxpayer wrote:
[...]

>> I'm with you on this, although I lean toward the quote aspect more
>> than the intentional bad grammar. Yogi Berra was quoted as saying
>> 'the future ain't what it used to be'. On the rare occasion that
one
>> wishes to convey this feeling, given the right audience, the quote
>> works.
>
> You ain't just whistlin Dixie, Pixie.

So it wasn't a tactical boo-boo?

--
Mike.

[Django Cat]

Mike Lyle wrote:

You've just reminded me of something I've been meaning to post about
for yonks...

DC, hopping to another place.

[John Dean]

Smarter than the average post.
--
John Dean
Oxford

[Mike Lyle]

...and Dean jinks around the post, and touches down!!

--
Mike.

[John Dean]

I did not have feathery relations with that duck, Mr Daffy.
--
John Dean
Oxford