Or maybe two questions, depending on how y'all count these things.

There are two main forms of the explicitly plural second person pronoun in use on this board: you-all and y'all. Each of them has, in its respective possessive case, what I would think might be a grammatical error. In the former we have your-all's and in the latter, y'all's. First, they both violate the rule that possessives of personal pronouns don't use the apostrophe and, second, your-all's is redundant in that the possessive is shown both in the your and in the all's.

Any comments from our prescriptivist contingent?

Dear Faldage: I spent a total of a couple years in Dixie,
and clearly remember "y'all" referring to just me.

Dear Dr Bill

A separate question, discussed to death elsewhere in these pages. I've heard opinions both ways on the subject and do not have sufficient experience of my own to intelligently discuss the matter.

Not sure whether this has anything to do with what you're asking, Faldage, but let's think about how 'you all' evolved. It could be that it was simply a short cut for saying 'all of you'. If so, we could write:

"All of you should listen."

Well, that was just too wordy. So, here in the South we cut to the chase and said,

"You all should listen."

And, finally:

"Y'all should listen."

"You all" began to function as a compound pronoun, so to speak. And so did "y'all" rather than as a pronoun followed by a modifying prepositional phrase as in 'all of you.'

When looking at the possessive form of 'all of you'--well, we've got a slight problem that we can address by changing 'you' to 'your,' obviously:

All of you should listen.
All of your children should listen.
All of yours should listen.

You all should listen. (compound dialectical pronoun form)
You-all's children should listen (compound dialetical pronoun now taking adjectivial form with apostrophe at the end of the compound form)
Y'all's children should listen (the compact edition).

That's how I see it right now, but will wait for further elucidation.

Bill, I never have heard anyone here refer to a singular person as y'all.

Faldage, has the y'all/ you-all usage become grammatically kosher now? I always thought of it as a colloquialism. And that therefore, all its spin-offs were informal too. So, whilst I agree with you, that the possessive all's simply doesn't hold, I also am left wondering why we must apply rules of grammar *only to the possessive case? Does this help at all?

I too have heard it used as both a singular and as a plural.

Disclaimer: not a member of said contingent; admit to leanings though.

maahey, what you've said is what I also said, but with more of an emphasis on both the fact that we're dealing with a dialectical construction and a dialectical pronoun in a compound form.

In other words, 'you all' is the second person plural pronoun within that dialect and functions as one word. The second part of this compound word is 'all', and would, therefore, take the apostrophe. All 'all's' are not created equal when examining dialects.

What is very peculiar, however, is the fact that we would add an apostrophe to a pronoun at all. We don't for its, theirs, yours, and ours. So, technically, I would think that y'alls would be the form that followed the others, but it doesn't work for the eye. The apostrophe helps clear up the visual problem: "Y'all's children better get on inside now." Visually that works for me and the meaning is apparent.

Faldage, I've been grinning ever since I read your post!
Wordwind gave a wonderful explanation of how it likely evolved. But I doubt there's a "correct" rule for spelling this, because as was pointed out, it is a colloquialism. Until I started putting it here, I don't think I'd ever seen it written, only heard it spoken. And I put your-all's, because your-alls' just doesn't taste right. So, if this is the only place you've seen it written, feel free to correct me right and left--I'm quite honored, to tell you the truth! I suspect the s got migrated down to the end for the same reason words such as spoonfuls and handfuls developed--it just comes easier off the tongue, to speakers of a language where the overwhelming majority of pluralizations are at the end of a word.

To a certain extent, my tongue was firmly located in my cheek when I posted this; there are no hard and fast spelling rules for what is primarily a spoken dialect, but there is a mistaken idea among many prescriptivists that non-standard usage has no rules. This is far from true. One can, for example, say, "I ain't got no money," but not, "I don't ain't got no money." This despite the fact that it is perfectly correct to say, "I might could use some money." Being a descriptivist is more than just saying anything goes. To be a real descriptivist one must describe what is used. Prescriptivists can just say that something is wrong and then ignore it, but a descriptivist has to say what the rules are and to whom they apply.

To be a real descriptivist one must describe what is used. Prescriptivists can just say that something is wrong and then ignore it, but a descriptivist has to say what the rules are and to whom they apply.
So what does a predescriptivist do?

Jump, I should think ...

In reply to:

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So what does a predescriptivist do?

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Once the farmer takes his wife, and the wife takes the cheese, I believe that the 'predescriptivist', like the cheese, stands alone.

I ain't got no clue on the y'all's question, though.

Ron.

I ain't got no clue on the y'all's question, though. That's 'cause you're a Yankee, Ron. As I sternly lectured a friend just this morning, "y'all's" is NOT the same thing as "your-all's". Not. at. all. These distinctions are an acquired art form, my dear.

y'all's crazy as bed bugs.
(but it makes me feel at home )

I know a pub called "The Four Alls", but I doubt if there's any connection - aside from the beer that is.

A friend of mine from Richmond, Virginia, used to say, "How y'all doin'?" whenever he greeted me. Meaning me, alone.

I believe:

A) You're going to find this usage in stock phrases irregardless of whether or not one or more people are involved or not.

2) Direct questioning of speakers is not the most accurate way to record usage, as I am sure anyone who has been involved in collecting dialect information can attest.

Þ) Someone is going to misunderstand my intent in 2)

misunderstand my intent in 2 [waving hand in the air e]
Did you mean because if you ask directly, that focuses the person's attention, and thus is likely to affect the output?

Yeah, Jackie. That's pretty much it. A classic example might be when Bill and Hill gave Skaneateles, NY its fifteen minutes a few years ago and the news guys asked the mayor how to pronounce the name of the town. He distinctly said, "Skay nee atlas," and then proceded to pronounce it "Skinny Atlas," when he was just saying it later on.