Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
Harry, I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but I would say that the omitting of the "of" is always wrong.
In the past sixty years with the growth of rock 'n' roll and blues lyrics into mainstream speech, the idioms (if that's the right word) of the uneducated black tenant farmers who wrote and sang the songs have crept into white colloquial conversation.
So I can imagine an author writing as his characters would speak, but I would think that there is no excuse for the dropping of the "of" outside of an appropriate narrative.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by miguel1626
Feeble racist arguments are so easy to refute. Just do a search of the Corpus of Historical American English for "couple [n*]" and see how many instances of pre-1900 usage you'll be able to find... |
I don't see GA Russell's statement as racist. The early blues pioneers were, by and large, not known for having advanced degrees in their résumés. That's not to criticize them, it's just recognizing the history. In the antebellum/Jim Crow South where the blues originated, a decent education was something to which few people of color had access.
But that
Corpus of Historical American English to which you linked, miguel1626, is fascinating, and certainly brings up a wealth of instances where the word 'couple' was not followed by the preposition 'of'.