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#117395 12/09/03 08:29 PM
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I've always used the above in a negative sense: "I don't get out much anymore."

Recently I've begun hearing/reading it without the negative: "It's too cold for me anymore" or "All I read is Nora Roberts anymore."

Is this an USn regional thing? Or does it cross ponds?


#117396 12/09/03 09:43 PM
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Dear AS: your first quote was part of a popular song, which can have helped its currency. The phrase itself looks to the past, and often to something lost or regretted, so repetition impossible or undesired. I'm having difficulty thinking of use of it omitting the negative, unless I use it as two separate words.
Your second two quotes seem rather awkward.

#117397 12/09/03 09:56 PM
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I'd never heard of this usage, so I was surprised to see lots of examples show up on the Harvard dialect survey of US English:

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/maps.php

See questions 54 to 57. The first two are rated as massively unacceptable (only about 5%), but the latter two have about a 20% or more acceptability. I'm not clear what the grammatical situation is that makes them different.

Traditional "some" is for positive statements, "I've got some", and "any" is for questions and negatives and suchlike, "Have you got any?" and "I haven't got any".

With "any more" I can make questions and negatives "Do you go there any more?" and "I don't go there any more" but there doesn't seem to be a positive: you have to say "I still go there", I suppose.


#117398 12/10/03 02:39 AM
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In reply to:

Traditional "some" is for positive statements, "I've got some", and "any" is for questions and negatives and suchlike, "Have you got any?" and "I haven't got any".


This may be how the rule is traditionally formulated, but I'm not sure it's correct. It doesn't take into account such positive sentences as "Any of them will do."

Bingley



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#117399 12/10/03 03:22 AM
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Recently I've begun hearing/reading it without the negative: "It's too cold for me anymore" or "All I read is Nora Roberts anymore."

I have heard this usage. A typical example to me would be something like It seems like all we ever do is fight anymore. It expresses a recent trend that is a departure from the way things used to be. Both of the examples you gave fit this pattern. It's too cold for me anymore (but I used to be happy with the climate). All I read is Nora Roberts anymore (but I used to have wider reading interests).


#117400 12/10/03 07:09 AM
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"Any of them will do."

"Any" also occurs in positive conditionals: "If you've got any". It's used anywhere that isn't an ordinary positive statement.

I think the "any" in "Any of them will do" -- oh look, and "anywhere that" -- is a quantifier, like "every". It's the difference between "I want to go somewhere warm" and "I want to go anywhere it's warm": one is some indefinite place, the other ranges over all such places.

The dialectal use of "anymore" must be a reinterpretation of some aspect of this -- non-real, or quantified, or something, but I couldn't see what was the bit of grammar or meaning that was actually doing it.


#117401 12/10/03 07:39 AM
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"It's too cold for me anymore"

I haven't heard 'anymore' used in that way on this side of the pond. It seems as though it is perhaps being used in place of 'nowadays'.


#117402 12/10/03 01:49 PM
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"I haven't heard 'anymore' used in that way on this side of the pond. It seems as though it is perhaps being used in place of 'nowadays'."

Yes, that's how I've heard my older relatives use it. As kind of a synonym for "these days"


#117403 12/10/03 02:16 PM
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Interesting, what Gurunet says (from AHD). I have to say, I hadn't realized it was alloneword.
an·y·more (ĕn'ē-môr', -mōr')
adv.
1.
a. Any longer; at the present: Do they make this model anymore?
b. From now on: We promised not to quarrel anymore.
Chiefly Midland U.S. Nowadays.
REGIONAL NOTE In standard American English the word anymore is often found in negative sentences: They don't live here anymore. But anymore is widely used in regional American English in positive sentences with the meaning “nowadays”: “We use a gas stove anymore” (Oklahoma informant in DARE). Its use, which appears to be spreading, is centered in the South Midland and Midwestern states, as well as in the Western states that received settlers from those areas. The earliest recorded examples are from Northern Ireland, where the positive use of anymore still occurs.


For reasons lost in the mists of time, I have the idea that saying any longer is the grammatically correct version.



#117404 12/10/03 02:50 PM
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To me, there seems to be a subtle difference between 'anymore' and 'any more.'

The former has a negative connotation, as debated above, but the latter is more universal.
I would say "I have not found any more mushrooms." but, "I don't seem to be able to find mushrooms anymore."(especially if I was speaking toConnie!)
I would never say, "Have you got anymore mushrooms." - it would be, "Have you got any more mushrooms."

Does this obscure things a little better?


#117405 12/10/03 03:33 PM
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Jackie

My experience chimes with this. Only USns seem to use it.

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#117406 12/10/03 08:09 PM
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Aha! How about this. Standard usage "We don't do that any more", with "any" meaning it's governed by a negation.

But that can be reinterpreted as "We don't do that these days". Therefore, in these varieties: "any more" = "these days".

The one-or-more word thing could come out of stress. "Are there any MOre" is a different pattern from "We don't do it any-more".


#117407 12/10/03 08:26 PM
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I see it differently. "Anymore" and "any more" are two entirely different parts of speech. "Anymore" is an adverb, plain and simple. "Any more" is an adjectival phrase governed by an adverb.

"I haven't found any mushrooms" means I never did. "I haven't found any more mushrooms" means I found some once, recently, but haven't found any since, though I keep looking. "I don't find mushrooms anymore" means either I'm not looking for them or the last time I looked was long, long ago. "I find mushrooms anymore" is outside my speech patterns.


#117408 12/10/03 08:35 PM
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I agree there are two totally different things, but I'd spell both of them "any more". Obviously there's the straightforward any + more where the two words have their separate meanings - I can't find any more mushrooms.

But the "any more" that's the negative of "still" is odd. I'd write it as two words "I don't do it any more", but can understand why you'd close it up: it doesn't much look like a compound. Well, sort of it is: "I did it some more" vs "I didn't do it any more". But apart from that it doesn't really behave as a compound of any and more, does it?


#117409 12/10/03 08:38 PM
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http://antiquesbygrandmothers.homestead.com/files/Music/dntgetrnd.jpg (active for a limited time, I'm sure)

I can't seem to find out where this Bob Russell came from, but his time with Abbey Lincoln was split amongst The two US coasts...


#117411 12/11/03 03:38 AM
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"I go to bed early anymore" translates roughly into "I go to bed early 'these days'". I've heard this and similar usage all my life, including the examples AnnaS says she beleives to be of new currency.




#117412 12/11/03 08:39 AM
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I said above I haven't heard this usage, and the following from Encarta seems, like Jackie's post and some others above, to confirm that it is a US thing but gives a bit more detail on geography of where it is used:

anymore or any more?

The adverbs any more (written as two words) and anymore (written as one word) are equally standard in American English and some other varieties (for example, South African English) Both forms are used after a negative or a question: She doesn’t live here anymore. Do you eat out any more?

Regional History

Used in the positive sense, “nowadays,” as in asparagus is expensive anymore, anymore recurs over much of the United States. It is strongest in the South Midland states of Kentucky and Indiana, but is also fairly common in the Upper and Lower Midwest, from Minnesota to Oklahoma, and in the Blue Ridge region of Virginia.

So there we are, it is used in the US, but doesn't seem to have fully spread out to the coasts yet!






#117413 12/11/03 12:26 PM
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I've heard this and similar usage all my life

Figures *you'd buck the geographic demographic, Juan.


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