For q10

[asterroc]

There was a discussion (in a locked post) in which I said "if you play internet poker anymore" and someone asked if I was from Western PA (I'm actually from NYC, though I've spent time in PA and Western NY). The alternative phrases being "if you still play internet poker" and "if you're playing internet poker these days". Once the alternatives were pointed out to me, I guess he's right that my construction is less common, but it doesn't seem particularly unusual to me either.

Comments

[tacotortoise.livejournal.com]

Though my interest in linguistics is purely recreational, I'm going to take a crack at this one, because it relates to one of my favorite topics in linguistics.

In most dialects of English, "anymore" is a negative polarity item (NPI). A negative polarity item is a word or phrase which can only occur within expressions which are semantically "negative." Technically, they occur in downard entailing contexts. For our purposes, downward entailing is simply a more precise notion of "semantic negativity." Some examples of negative polarity items in action: (asterisks denote ungrammatical or questionable sentences)

1a) Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
1b) *Frankly, my dear, I give a damn.

2a) All night long I held a grudge for that safety belt that wouldn't budge.
2b) *All night long I held a grudge for that safety belt that easily budged.

3a) Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded.
3b) *Everybody goes there anymore; it's always crowded.

So, typically, an instance of the word "anymore" must occur within a negative expression of some sort. But recall that I said that "anymore" is an NPI in "most dialects of English." In some dialects, particularly some American regional dialects, "anymore" is not a negative polarity item, and is more or less synonymous with "nowadays." I don't know about the regional prevalence of this usage, but apparently some people associate it with western PA (perhaps the North Midlands dialect region in general?).

However, there are still some important things to consider about NPIs.
Looking back on the given examples, we can see that there are multiple ways to create a "negative" context. In 1a) and 2a), this is due to the word "not." In 3a), it is due to the word "nobody." Nevertheless, it should be fairly clear that these are all indicators of "negative" expressions. Other expressions which license negative polarity items include expressions of doubt, questions, and if-clauses. (My question for the linguists: what makes questions and if-clauses downard entailing environments? All I understand about DE comes from the aforecited Wikipedia page, and I have a hard time figuring out how it aplies to those expressions. I have a good idea in my head of why those are "semantically negative," though.)

Anyway, your usage of "anymore" occurred within an if-clause, so it may be licensed. However, not every NPI is necessarily licensed by a particular negative expression. My own (completely uninformed) guess is that some contexts are more "weakly" negative; your sample sentence may be such a case. So maybe the reader adjudged the context to be insufficiently negative to license "anymore" in the standard usage, and assumed you were using a dialectic variant.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Ah. I am guessing I would use NPIs not only in negative expressions defined by "not" words, but also in sentences in which the *context* is negative. For example, (3b) sounded unusual but not *wrong* to me. Similarly, I would say "Are you beating your wife anymore?" as beating a wife is a negative connotation. In the context of my statement "if you play internet poker anymore," I viewed playing internet poker as a negative thing, so "anymore" was appropriate.

Another sentence I would find acceptable: "When Bush is in the White House and Romney is running to replace him, of course I give a damn!"

[tacotortoise.livejournal.com]

I think there is a little confusion about the meaning of the term "negative" here. When I say "negative," I mean something akin to logical negation, though it is considerably more flexible than that. It sounds like you are taking "negative" to include "unfavorable," which is not quite right as far as NPIs are concerned. Which is not to say that words or expressions with unfavorable connotations can't count as DE environments. Compare:

4) I doubt I'll ever climb Kilimanjaro.
5) *Those goddamn stupid wingnut pundits will ever just stop talking.

In the first case, the word "doubt" licenses the NPI "ever" -- we can think of a sentence of the form "I doubt X" as meaning "I think it is likely that (not X)". In the second case, "goddamn stupid wingnut pundits" clearly has an unfavorable connotation, but it does not imply any sort of negation.

In sentence 3b), while the added clause "it's always crowded" may imply an unfavorable situation, it is not a context that would license an NPI. Moreover, it has no effect on the context of "Everybody goes there anymore." Let's trim the the examples from 3) down a bit:

3c) Nobody goes there anymore.
3d) (*)Everybody goes there anymore.

Now, if you found 3b) acceptable (if unusual), then I would think you would find 3d) acceptable as well. If so, this suggests that you do in fact allow positive "anymore" in your idiolect. What little research I did suggests that positive "anymore" is not so much a regional variation as a social variation. So you don't need to be from western Pennsylvania, you just need to hang around with the right people. Note that, while positive "anymore" may be non-standard, it is not "wrong." It is generally considered informal, and mostly restricted to speech, but it's not an error.

Lastly, I'd like to address the two additional examples you gave in your reply.

6) Are you beating your wife anymore?
7) When Bush is in the White House and Romney is running to replace him, of course I give a damn!

First of all, 6) is just fine, even if positive "anymore" is not in your idiolect, and it doesn't have to do with beating your wife. 6) is a question, and questions are (almost?) always valid contexts for NPIs. I don't know what makes a question a downward entailing context, but my own take on it is that in a question, you're leaving the "positivity" or "negativity" of the predicate ("You're [not] beating your wife [anymore]") open. Consider some variants of that question with (hopefully) more favorable predicates attached:

6b) Are you teaching Physics anymore?
6c) Are you playing guitar anymore?
6d) Are you working at nerd camp anymore?

I think you'll agree that these are just as valid as the original 6). Personally, I would pick "Are you still Xing" as a stylistic preference, but I see nothing wrong with "anymore" in these cases. And if "if you play internet poker anymore" is a valid use of an NPI, it is chiefly because of the if-clause (which calls into question whether or not "you" are playing internet poker), and not because of the shadiness of internet poker.

And, finally, 7). I would give two reasons for judging that sentence as valid, and neither of them have to do (directly) with the evils of Bush and Romney. First of all, I would say that the positive use of "give a damn" is a rhetorical device. The speaker is deliberately using a construction which is chiefly used in the negative, to highlight the significance of actually "giv[ing] a damn." Note the "of course" for emphasis. Secondly, consider the probable context of such a remark. I imagine that such a remark, in the real world, would probably have been preceeded by a [possibly rhetorical] question along the lines of,

7b) Who gives a damn about the election?

Note that this is a question, so the NPI "give[s] a damn" is entirely valid. With this setup, the parallelism of "I give a damn!" is itself justification for the nonstandard construction. If the setup for 7) had instead been, say,

8) Are you concerned about the upcoming presidential election?

then "...I give a damn" would be more jarring.

Do you mind that I go on about NPIs? I can't help myself!