Ain't workin'

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters mertz at gnosis.cx
Fri Jul 26 14:36:31 EDT 2002


|>AND because the "you" is actually redundant if I understand
|>"slang grammar" correctly (isn't the great song's title just
|>"Ain't Misbehavin'" without any pronoun?-).

|"Ain't" can be used with any subject in incorrect English, actually.  I
|don't know "Ain't Misbehavin'", but the subject of the song "Ain't
|Superstitious" is "I", frex.

"Ain't" is originally a contraction of "am not" (with some
simplification of the "mn" consonant cluster that doesn't sound right to
English ears).  It's been several centuries since "ain't" has been
extended to cover numbers and persons other than first-person singular.
But at least to my ears, if I hear "ain't" without a specified subject,
the "I" pronoun is the default subject.  However, other semantic context
can lead to a non-default interpretation.

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