Re: "She gone to stay"
Ian Jackson
<r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> writes
> I found this text:
>
> ›Just when she left me,
> She gone to stay.‹
>
>http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/sittin-top-world
>
> What does it mean?
>
> (I understand the first line. I also would understand
> ›She's gone to stay‹ = ›She is gone to stay‹, which I
> believe to mean: She is gone in order to stay at the
> location that she went to. But what is the meaning of
> ›She gone to stay.‹ without ›is‹?)
>
By itself, it means that she has gone permanently. She is not coming
back. She "has gone for good" (which is itself a rather strange
expression, as the speaker/singer/writer may not think it is "for
good"!).
--
Ian
CDB
> I found this text:
> �Just when she left me,
> She gone to stay.�
> http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/sittin-top-world
> What does it mean?
> (I understand the first line. I also would understand
> �She's gone to stay� = �She is gone to stay�, which I
> believe to mean: She is gone in order to stay at the
> location that she went to. But what is the meaning of
> �She gone to stay.� without �is�?)
It means "she's gone for good". The dropped "is" is reminiscent of
Black English, and "gone to stay" may be a phrase Dylan picked up
from a blues song (the phrase being quite common* in the genre), since
all the other verses have the copula. The stock phrase is "come to
stay", meaning "come with no intention of leaving again".
On the other hand, Dylan may have left the "is" out to make the song
sound authentic, or just because he felt like it. Maybe he was
stoned.
*Here's one by BB King, for example, although BB hasn't dropped the
"is" (first song, second verse):
http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/2541/blbking.htm
Ian Jackson
<r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> writes
>Ian Jackson <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>By itself, it means that she has gone permanently. She is not coming
>>back. She "has gone for good" (which is itself a rather strange
>>expression, as the speaker/singer/writer may not think it is "for
>>good"!).
>
> ›She is gone to stay‹?
>
> Can ›is‹ be sometimes omitted in English or is
> this only allowed in poems/lyrics?
>
No, it's not 'good' English. See the posting from "CDB", who explains
why the "is" is missing.
--
Ian
CDB
> "CDB" <belle...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>> It means "she's gone for good". The dropped "is" is reminiscent of
>> Black English, and "gone to stay" may be a phrase Dylan picked up
>> from a blues song (the phrase being quite common* in the genre),
>
> �Gone to stay� alone is quite intelligible to me, that is,
> I can understand the meaning of the phrase from the meaning
> of its words.
Quite so. I mentioned it specifically because it seemed a little
strange to me. I take it to be a development of "come to stay".
> My question only was about the missing �is�
> (which also could be a missing �has�). But this now has
> been answered by you (it's Black English).
That's what I think, but maybe I should have made it clearer that I
was speculating.
Ian Jackson
<r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> writes
>r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>›Just when she left me,
>>She gone to stay.‹
>
> Only several days after posting this, I became
> aware that an is-less gone phrase even is the
> title of one of the albums of Bob Dylan, namely,
> ›World Gone Wrong‹.
>
That's not quite the same. It's not "The World Is (or, more likely, Has)
Gone Wrong", it's "The World (Which Has) Gone Wrong". It's just a
'short' way of saying it.
--
Ian
Ian Jackson
<r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> writes
>Ian Jackson <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>>Only several days after posting this, I became
>>>aware that an is-less gone phrase even is the
>>>title of one of the albums of Bob Dylan, namely,
>>>›World Gone Wrong‹.
>>That's not quite the same. It's not "The World Is (or, more likely, Has)
>>Gone Wrong", it's "The World (Which Has) Gone Wrong". It's just a
>>'short' way of saying it.
>
>
> If this ›which‹ phrase is non-restrictive, shouldn't it be
> separated with a comma, giving:
> ›The world, which has gone wrong‹?
>
> Omitting the ›the‹ and the ›which has‹, this becomes:
> ›World, Gone Wrong‹.
>
> And indeed, I find a comma in a similar phrase here,
> where the ›is‹ is omitted in the second line of:
>
> ›she is re-creation
> she, intoxicated by thee‹
>
>http://www.oceanstar.com/patti/lyrics/dancing.htm
>
> So, possible it would also be more correct to write:
> ›She, gone to stay‹.
>
In "she, intoxicated by thee", "intoxicated by thee" is a description of
"she". The 'long version' would be "she, who is intoxicated by thee".
> I can imagine to read this with a hyphen in a script
> for a play:
>
> ›He - sitting alone on the sofa
If I were writing the play, I would use brackets.
He (sitting alone on the sofa)
"Hello, Mary"
> She - gone to stay‹
I'm not quite sure how you could use 'gone to stay' to describe Mary.
>
> So, with additional punctuation it seems to be correct
> English to me.
>
I don't think that it works with this particular example.
--
Ian
Ian Jackson
>
But if she's not on the scene, it's unlikely that she will have any
lines to say!
--
Ian