| 词组 | ain't |
| 释义 | ain't The history of ain't is both complicated and obscure, and the amount of real historical investigation devoted to it has been very small compared to the reams of paper that have been written to condemn it. Much of what has been written is not informative, and some of it is misinformative. We will try here to lay out what is known about ain't and how it came to be in its present disesteem, and then examine the ways in which it has been and still is used. The grammarians Jespersen 1909-49 and Curme 1931 made brief examinations of the origin of ain 't; but, as far as we know, a short study by Professor Harold H. Bender of Princeton (also the chief etymologist for Webster's Second) in Word Study, March 1936, is the first devoted entirely to an examination of the subject. (Two later ones—among many—that you may find of interest are Martin Stevens, "The Derivation of'Ain't'," American Speech, October 1954, and Archibald A. Hill, "The Tainted Ain't Once More," College English, June 1965.) One of the things that makes ain't stand out is its apparent lack of direct connection to any of the inflected forms of be: am, is, are, were, was, etc. The reason is ultimately a shift in the way we perceive words. When ain't was first used in writing in the early 18th century, the spelling represented a way of pronouncing the word. Nowadays we tend to pronounce a word according to the way we see it spelled. Thus, ain't looks stranger to us than it did to those who spoke and wrote it two or three centuries ago. Another complication is that we cannot be entirely certain whether ain't began as a shortening of are not or am not. We do know that it had an earlier spelling an't (or sometimes a n't), which you can see would not be difficult to derive phonologically from are or am; the spelling ain't seems originally to have represented one particular way of pronouncing the contraction more often spelled an't. Bender found that an't arose almost simultaneously from both am not and are not. The phonology of these derivations is discussed in Jespersen (vol. 5) and in Hill's article mentioned above. Our present evidence—and there is doubtless more to be found—shows am not the earliest: • Miss PRUE. You need not sit so near one, if you have any thing to say, I can hear you farther off, I an't deaf —William Congreve, Love for Love, 1695 The earliest evidence for are not is from 1696: • LORD FOPPINGTON....these shoes a'n't ugly, but they don't fit me —Sir John Vanbrugh, The Relapse Evidence in Jespersen shows that Jonathan Swift, in his Journal to Stella, was using an't for am not, are not, and is not around 1710: "I an't vexed," "an't you an impudent slut," "Presto is plaguy silly tonight, an't he?" It would thus appear that either an't also developed from isn't somehow or that it was extended in use to the third person singular. Jespersen advances (somewhat tentatively) this third derivation, which Strang 1970 represents as isn't i'n't -* e'n't -» ain't. Bender, on the other hand, supposes an't = isn't is simply an extension of the form to the third person. To complicate matters, we have here the curious fact that an't - isn't is attested earlier than i'n't, although e'n't is of about the same vintage. Until more and clearer evidence is turned up, we cannot be sure which route led to third person singular a(i)n't. We also have to take account of a fourth line of derivation in which an't and ain't are used for has not and have not. The derivation of ain't from has or have not is a favorite of a couple of investigators (see Stevens, above, for instance), but such evidence as we have suggests that this is a later development, apparently in the 19th century. The earliest citation for it in the Dictionary of American Regional English is dated 1838. It is not, however, an Americanism, being recorded also in the English Dialect Dictionary. The derivation itself is fairly straightforward: 18th-century ha 'n't, for both has not and have not, becomes an't by loss of the h (in later American English the h will sometimes be restored to produce hain 7). Let us pause to recapitulate. Ain't comes from an't which in turn comes from am not (perhaps by way of amn't, which still survives in Irish English and— according to Gowers in Fowler 1965—in Scots English too), from are not (one common pronunciation of are was close to that of air; Baron 1982 cites a 1791 American spelling reformer named Chambers whose system spelled are as er), from is not (perhaps through i'n't and en't), and later from have not and has not (through ha 'n 7). So the connection of ain't with be (and have) is not quite as obscure as it might appear on the surface. How ain't came to the widely disparaged status it now occupies is scarcely more obvious than its origin. Strang 1970 notes that several negative contractions—among them don't, shan't, won't, as well as an't—seem to have developed around 1600; they begin to show up in literary sources, especially the Restoration dramatists, toward the end of the century (Mario Pei in The Story of Language, 1949 asserts ain't was established in usage by King Charles II). But in the early 18th century, some of these abbreviated forms begin to be criticized; Addison {The Spectator 135, 1711) and Swift {The Tatler 230, 1710 and Polite Conversations, 1738) are among the earliest to disparage them, although (as we have seen) Swift used them himself. The earliest mentions of an't specifically are in lists of condemned contractions. The Reverend John Witherspoon, as "The Druid," contributed a number of papers to the Pennsylvania Journal on things he didn't care for in American English; his No. VI (16 May 1781) says: • I will mention the vulgar abbreviations in general, as an't, can't, han't, don't, should'nt, would'nt, could'nt, &c. (in Mathews 1931) The Dictionary of American English mentions a similar listing in B. Dearborn's Columbian Grammar of 1795, and Leonard 1929 mentions the English grammarian Philip Withers in 1788 as offering similar criticism. Ain't is lumped with other contractions for condemnation in 1825 by the American grammarian Samuel Kirk-ham. The first to single out ain't specifically seems to have been Alford 1866. While he notes that ain't is very frequently used "even by highly educated persons," he does not approve, partly because he thinks ain't bears no resemblance to am not and are not. Oddly enough, Bardeen 1883 lists only Alford (from among his list of two dozen commentators) as opposed to ain't, but he does mention that the dictionaries of Webster and Worcester consider it indefensible. Hill in the College English article mentioned above quotes the linguist Raven I. McDavid, Jr. to the effect that ain't lost status as a pronunciation while the broader of the two pronunciations probably represented by an't gained status (a shift which would eventually lead to the appearance in British books of aren 't I—with the r not pronounced; see aren't I). Jespersen tells us that in the 19th and 20th centuries authors put ain't "is not" in the speech of vulgar or uneducated characters. Thus Jane Austen has a vulgar woman say: • "... I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there an't" —Sense and Sensibility, 1811 Charles Dickens puts it in the mouth of his detestable Yorkshire schoolmaster: • 'So it is,' said Squeers. 'Ain't it, Nickleby?' —Nicholas Nickleby, 1839 And George Bernard Shaw has a prizefighter say: • "Oh, no," said Skeene, soothingly; "... sparring ain't the real thing...." —Cashel Byron's Profession, 1886 American pedagogues of the 19th century were willing to take Witherspoon's 1781 observations (based in turn on Addison's Spectator strictures of 1711) and make them part of the teaching of English. But some discrimination seems to have been attempted at times, at least in the advice given to graduates of the Newburyport Female High School in 1846 by a man named Peabody. He advises great care and discretion in the employment of the negative contractions, working his way through can't, don't, haven't, isn't, hasn't, didn't, couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't in a sort of descending scale of acceptability. He saves the worst for last: Won't for will not, and ain't for is not or are not are absolutely vulgar; and ain't for has not or have not, is utterly intolerable —quoted by Shirley Brice Heath, in Shopen & Williams 1980 It is to be noted that Peabody was attempting to discriminate among not only the various contractions, but also the different uses of ain't. A few early 20th-century commentators also discriminate: • ain't. Avoid as inelegant. In such a phrase as "he ain't," it is both vulgar and ungrammatical —Vizetelly 1906 Baron 1982 cites John Bechtel in Slips of Speech (1903) as making a similar discrimination. By 1926 H. W. Fowler could view first-person use of ain't quite differently from other uses: A(i)n't is merely colloquial, & as used for isn't is an uneducated blunder & serves no useful purpose. But it is a pity that a(i)n't for am not, being a natural contraction & supplying a real want, should shock us as though tarred with the same brush. Though I'm not serves well enough in statements, there is no abbreviation but a(i)n't I? for am I not?.... Fowler's defense of ain't I? was repeated on this side of the Atlantic: • What is the matter with ain't I? for am not I? Nothing whatever, save that a number of minor grammarians object to it —American Mercury, August 1927 (probably H. L. Mencken) But such nice differences have generally been abandoned by the minor grammarians, both British and American, and they have held the whip hand. Here is Josephine Turck Baker 1927: I ain't and Ain't I are always incorrect, I'm not and Am I not being the correct forms. As a contraction in place of isn't, ain't is a vulgarism. And her single-minded view has become a tradition: ain't is a vulgarism altogether too frequently used for am not, aren't, isn't, hasn't, haven't, and still other verbal negatives. It is, if possible, worse for am not, has not, have not, than for is not and are not. But there is really no such word. Don't use it —Opdyke 1939 ain't. Nonstandard for am not. isn't, aren't, or hasn't —Guth 1985 It will be seen that whatever discrimination was earlier made among different uses of ain't has been lost; and in Opdyke's remark about nonexistence the historical connection of ain't to am not, are not, etc., is entirely unrecognized, possibly because the earlier form an't had dropped out of use around the end of the 19th century. We cannot be sure why an't vanished, but it did. The loss probably had something to do with its most prestigious pronunciation being more frequently spelled aren't in the 19th century and the less prestigious pronunciations being spelled ain't. Ain't appears to have become the regular spelling in American English at a fairly early date. Now that we have traced the history of the word from the ordinary conversational English of educated 17th-and 18th-century English men and women through its transformation into the bugbear of the American schoolteacher of the 20th century, we can turn our attention to how this much vilified word is actually used. When the entry for ain't in Webster's Third tried in 1961 to describe actual use based on the information then available, it caused a great deal of controversy in the press, especially the portion of the usage note that allowed that ain't was "used orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivated speakers esp. in the phrase ain't I." And only a couple of years ago a correspondent in a remote corner of the Southwest troubled himself to tear off a piece of paper bag, inscribe on it his opinion that no one in his town would stoop so low as to use ain't, and mail it to Merriam-Webster. Such outbursts remind us that the statement of James H. Sledd that "any red-blooded American would prefer incest to Ain't" (cited by Raven I. McDavid, Jr., PADS, April 1967) is only slightly exaggerated. The use of ain't in present-day spoken English is hard for dictionary editors to assess accurately, since most dictionary evidence is from print. We do know that it is common among the less educated and among children, especially when talking to their peers. We do have evidence that educated persons whose regular vocabulary still includes ain't use the term in talking to relatives and to peers with whom they are both friendly and on a first-name basis (there is an intelligent discussion of this in Hill). While we have little evidence of unguarded, friendly, peer-to-peer conversation in our files, we do have letters. From the old days to the present, the use of ain't in a letter marks a close and warm relationship. • Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam! —Charles Lamb, letter, February 1801 • Where is Moore? Why an't he out? —Lord Byron, letter, 29 July 1816 • Thence to Dresden. Ain't I glad, though the weather is no better —Henry Adams, letter, 6 Apr. 1859 • Nurse doesn't know I'm writing. Aint I lawless! — Ellen Terry, letter, 4 Mar. 1897 • Ain't it hell to have a head of the State in the family? —Harry S. Truman, letter, 11 May 1952 • I trust you find my handwriting as bad as yr own. I ain't strong enough to hit a key tonight —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 26 Mar. 1957 Ain't is also used in what Professor Hill calls a "con-gruently informal style." This may be spoken—as in an interview or even in a talk—or written—as in an article. If ain't has a special function in these examples, it is to emphasize their informality. • Like, they had these three heavies coming down the street and me walking toward them. Now right away that ain't right. Three guys coming at me, I run, right ... ? —Steve McQueen, Newsweek (6 Jan. 1964); interview reproduced in Current Biography, October 1966 • He ain't too interested in what the contemporary world thinks about him —William Faulkner, talk to students at University of Virginia, quoted in Barnard 1979 • I'm from my generation, you know, if you ain't working you're doing something wrong —Lena Home, quoted in Northeast Mag., 3 Feb. 1985 • She's the doctor from Australia who goes around telling everybody we're all gonna die, that if we keep these politicians in there, they're going to blow up the world. I ain't buying it —Arlo Guthrie, quoted in Yankee, August 1986 • Well, I have my doubts, folks. I recently saw the first 1980s graffiti exhibition ... and, let me tell you, these artists ain't —Gerald Peary, Flare, April 1984 • But that was before I learned one of my favorite speakers can be purchased in only one city in Texas, and it ain't Houston, folks —Henry Hunt, Houston Post, 26 Aug. 1984 The congruently informal ain't, if we may call it that, can also be used for characterizing purposes. In the next example we see Will Rogers projecting his stage personality in print: • Just imagine, if you can, if the flesh of this Country were allowed to wander around promiscuously! Why, there ain't no telling where it would wind up —Will Rogers, The Illiterate Digest, 1924 The characterizing ain't in writing is often meant to mark the speaker as belonging to a lower class or being poorly educated or being black or being countrified. This use is common in fiction: • 'What! he ain't rich then?' Foker asked —W. M. Thackeray, The History of Pendennis, 1850 • "Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Cashel, "don't say that. You're joking, ain't you?" —George Bernard Shaw, Cashel Byron's Profession, 1886 • When he returned he said, "What have I got that I can pay? Ain't I been a poor man every day of my life?"—Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel, 1958 • The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know —E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime, 1975 • "... You ain't do nothing like that, did you Mitch, huh?" —Vern E. Smith, The Jones Men, 1974 Although most common in fiction, the characterizing ain't can also be found in other forms of writing. The first example describes an unpromising family of white farm helpers, the second a Southern sheriff. • ... these ... look like they've been joined up with the human race for only a couple of months now. Mrs. W. says she went to school for one day and didn't loin ... nothin and ain't went back —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 25 Jan. 1953 • ... the country people's ignorance he found irresistible and I think it tickled him to perplex their foolish heads, white or black, with the same old leading question: "You heard about old Nat Turner, ain't you?" —William Styron, This Quiet Dust and Other Writings, 1982 An editorial in the Boston Globe (5 Sept. 1983) also notes that the characterizing ain't can be used in reportage: • It may well quote the person accurately, but it may also be a code word, used in a sly way to tip off the reader to the fact that the person being quoted is poor, illiterate, or black. It is a moot point whether accuracy or characterization is the purpose here: • The grocery store ain't got no limits on how many groceries they sell. I ought to be able to sell all the guns I want —Blake Roberts, a Greenville, S.C., gun dealer, quoted by Wayne King, N. Y. Times, 13 Mar. 1975 Another of the most common public uses of ain't makes use of the word's ability to attract attention. This use pops up unsurprisingly in advertising and in political slogans. It is also used in otherwise rather straightforward prose for purposes of contrast. • ... Reagan ... continued to use the line he had used when he kicked off his campaign on Labor Day: "You ain't seen nothin' yet." —Elizabeth Drew, New Yorker, 3 Dec. 1984 • You ain't seen nothin' until you've seen ... —television advt, 16 Feb. 1980 • ... and that ain't hay —singing commercial, 24 Feb. 1981 • ... firms who can make things smell like what they ain't —Bennett Cerf, Saturday Rev., 7 Mar. 1953 • So what? Jack Dempsey isn't; Babe Ruth isn't; Joe Louis and Douglas MacArthur ain't —George Jean Nathan, Beware of Parents: A Bachelor's Book for Children, 1943 • Louise ain't what she used to be in voice —Metronome, January 1952 • The old pervading desire to show the schoolmarm that the cultured ain't so cultured —Sheridan Baker, College English, November 1964 (in Hill) • I ain't referring to strip-mining, scoop-shovel operators —Malcolm S. Forbes, Forbes, 1 Feb. 1974 • ... misprint, catachresis, misspelling, solecism, barbarism, and other evidence that English ain't what it used to be. It never was —Howard 1980 • To look at the objects you wouldn't think they were worth very much. The Hope Diamond they ain't — Edwards Park, Smithsonian, August 1983 • This is an infuriating misuse by an ignoramus who thinks 'authoring' three books is somehow a grander achievement than writing them. It ain't —Charles Kuralt, in Harper 1975, 1985 You will probably have noticed by now that many of these attention-getting uses of ain't occur in familiar phrases. Such catch phrases and variations on them make up a goodly portion of the word's use, both orally and in writing. We add a few more samples: • This show might be described as a working-class comedy, but although it works pretty hard, well— class it ain't —Cleveland Amory, TV Guide, 20 Mar. 1976 • The wackiness of movies, once so deliciously amusing, ain't funny anymore —Richard Schickel, Harper's, March 1971 • What is wrong with all this, of course, is that it just ain't so —Archibald MacLeish, quoted in English Jour., November 1968 • No, no, cried the America of World War II—"Say it ain't so, Lyndon." —Philip Roth, Reading Myself and Others, 1975 • It ain't over till it's over —Mike Williams, stock-market analyst, in news telecast, 16 Dec. 1985 • ... doomsayers ... have been warning us that we ain't seen nothing yet —Louis Rukeyser, "Wall Street Week" (PBS television), 13 Mar. 1981 • Leftovers ain't what they used to be —Apartment Life, January 1980 • Davies has the Order of Lenin—just conferred. He's an economic royalist—"ain't that sompin?" — Harry S. Truman, diary entry, 22 May 1945 • But, overall, to borrow Burt Lance's phrase, the system ain't broke —Albert R. Hunt, Jr., Wall Street Jour., 5 July 1979 Another use of ain 7, seldom mentioned though often heard, is in popular music. You have only to recall songs with lines like "It ain't necessarily so," "The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be," "Ain't she sweet?" to realize that the medium of popular music alone could have kept ain't alive without much help from other sources. The function of ain 7 in the lyrics of songs is obvious: it has only one syllable, and it is more clearly heard and more easily enunciated than the isn 7 it usually replaces. Now we come to the famous tag question "ain't I?" We have seen earlier that Fowler 1926 regretted its being considered indicative of low breeding and that The American Mercury wondered what is the matter with it. The tag question was used by the linguistic geographers to elicit oral uses of ain't; their results influenced the statement in Webster's Third that caused so much controversy. Hill's article discusses the tag question; so do Einstein 1985 and others. A few hardy souls approve the locution: • Only in the first-person-negative interrogative of the verb "to be" is the contraction "ain't" acceptable in standard speech —William Safire, N. Y. Times Mag., 23 May 1982 • I'll accept 'ain't I?' instead of 'am I not?' That's useful —Abe Burrows, in Harper 1985 Even Bernstein 1977 admits the utility of the tag: • There can be no doubt that ain't I is easier to say than aren't I or amn't I and sounds less stilted than am I not. Nevertheless Bernstein nevertheless rejects the tag and questions the validity of the usage note in Webster's Third. There may be legitimate reasons for a certain skepticism about the use of ain't I. One is that much of Linguistic Atlas material was gathered about a half century ago; it is hard to know if the information is still valid. The Dictionary of American Regional English does not mention the tag specifically, although the editors do reprint E. Bagby Atwood's summary of its distribution in A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States (1953). But even if the tag is logical, is grammatically sound, is approved by some, and is desired by others, does it actually come up very often in real speech? Although, as conceded above, we do not have enough direct evidence to answer that question conclusively, we do have a fair amount of indirect evidence from letters and such showing that ain't occurs frequently in inverted expressions, such as questions. • As for the Fraiilein, ain't she a one-er, that's all — Henry Adams, letter, 8 Nov. 1859 • Ain't I a beast for not answering you before? — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, letter (in Jespersen 1909-49) • Oh aint it a dark day —Ellen Terry, letter, 2 Oct. 1896 • My cousin thought this a remarkable coincidence, illustrating how remarkable coincidences can be. Now ain't it? —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 24 Apr. 1951 (Other examples may be found above.) So all we can say for sure is that when the tag is necessary, ain't will probably occur in it in some people's speech. One use of ain't that many handbooks agree is common is facetious or jocular or humorous use. We do not have much evidence for such use. Here is an obvious case: • We like to make jokes, for instance, about the language of tax forms. Hen heh, we chuckle, ain't them bureaucrats a caution? —Mitchell 1979 Don't be surprised if you're not chuckling. Ain't in itself ain't funny. It is a fact, of course, that ain't can commonly be found in humorous writers from Bill Arp to Artemus Ward to Mark Twain to Ring Lardner and Will Rogers. But its use is generally appropriate to the character (sometimes the narrator) using it; the humor does not reside in the use of ain't. What the handbooks probably mean is that many educated people, when they use ain't, try to use it in such a way as to show that it is not part of their serious day-to-day vocabulary. Such disinfecting of the word seems most frequently to be accomplished by the use of the familiar fixed phrases we illustrated earlier. An old chestnut like "things ain't what they used to be" or its wry contemporary cousin "nostalgia ain't what it used to be" is the verbal equivalent of a wink or nudge intended to show that you are not so ill-bred as to really use ain't. It's not really an attempt at jocularity or humor—it's an attempt at distancing. We have saved till last a clutch of citations—from speech—for ain't as used by various public figures. Several are U.S. presidents or others active in the political life, but few of these uses sound like self-conscious attempts by the educated to affect the speech of the general electorate. Most sound perfectly natural and untouched by irony: • ... education means moving a man from where he is to where he ain't —Robert Frost, cited by Calvin H. Plimpton, Amherst College Bulletin, January 1967 • ... Harry Truman would not say. To one probing reporter he quipped: "You just want to find out something and you ain't going to do it." —Time, 25 July 1949 • You think it's going to be done, but it ain't —Julia Child, television show, 3 Mar. 1971 • Sir Winston ... said the portrait of him seated and wearing his characteristic bow tie "makes me look half-witted, which I ain't." —Sir Winston Churchill, in N.Y. Times, 12 Jan. 1978 • John ain't been worth a damn since he started wearing $300 suits —Lyndon B. Johnson, quoted by Larry L. King, New Times, 20 Aug. 1976 • Eleven-thirty at night ain't a time to read up on this very complicated higher-education problem —Gerald R. Ford, quoted by John Hersey, N.Y. Times Mag., 20 Apr. 1975 Reagan dodged a question about the Hödel report Wednesday night at his nationally televised news conference. • "I ain't talking," he said —Ronald R. Reagan, in Morning Union (Springfield, Mass.), 10 Jan. 1985 • You're looking at a man what ain't straining — George C. Wallace, quoted by B. Drummond Ayres, Jr., N.Y. Times, 30 Mar. 1975 • "If at the end of four years they want to throw me out, it's O.K. with me," the Mayor responds, adding: "I like my job very much, but it ain't the end of the world if I don't have it." —Edward Koch, quoted by Richard Haitch, N.Y. Times, 6 July 1980 Conclusion: We have seen that ain't is a stigmatized word in general use; in ordinary speaking and writing it tends to mark the speaker and writer as socially or educationally inferior. We have also seen that it is in widespread use but usually in particular circumscribed ways that tend to remove the stigma from its use. Study the examples here. Then decide when and how you will use the word, if at all. Though you may choose—indeed, be well advised—to forgo making sentences like "I ain't had dinner yet" a regular feature of your conversation or writing, at times you will probably find ain't a very useful word despite (or even because of) the controversy that surrounds its use. |
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