I think Mark's onto something when he writes that "ain't can be a sort of phrase-initial marker of questions and exclamations".
(Blah blah blah the obligatory links to previous relevant posts blah blah blah ...)
Mark cites the following examples:
(link) Ain't I'm a dog, I'm always steppin' around
(link) Ain't this is a great country -- free bologna sandwiches for profaners!!
Mark notes that the first is a "pretty solid citation" and that the second "might be a typo, I admit". My personal judgment is that the first is awful, but then again I didn't grow up hearing the relevant song. The second I find totally normal. If you follow the link, you'll see that this is the closing comment by a person who claims to have been arrested for holding a sign reading "F.U.G.W." along a Bush motorcade route. I take the comment to be sarcastic -- (and I mean sarcastic sarcastic, not could-care-less sarcastic).
Anyway, I think both examples make perfect sense if you take ain't to be a phrase-initial marker meaning something like "isn't it the case (that)", "don't you agree (that)", "it's clear (that)", or the like -- observe:
It's clear that I'm a dog; I'm always steppin' around.
This is a great country, don't you agree? Free bologna sandwiches for profaners!!
Mark then gives props to Trevor's alternative idea that there's a missing subject of ain't in the lyric we've been debating. Mark cites the following four examples to support this idea; curiously, only one of them (#3) has an actual missing subject.
All of these cases, including the subjectless #3, are examples of existential sentences. There is used as the subject of an existential sentence in standard English while it is used in most other situations in which a "dummy" or expletive subject is necessary. But in many nonstandard varieties of English, including AAVE, it fulfills both roles. Apparently, so may a null subject -- at least in some circumstances, such as the cos ain't no construction (and I mean "construction" in a relatively neutral sense -- I might have said "frame", but that might open up another can of worms).
(By the way, in case you found the 238 ghits for Mark's suggested {"cos ain't no"} search underwhelming, try adding the 18 for {"coz ain't no"}, the 89 for {"cus ain't no"}, the 533 for {"cuz ain't no"}, and the 3620 for {"cause ain't no"}.)
There's a lot I'm unsure of about the Ain't how that God planned it line, but I'm pretty sure it's not an existential that would thereby license a null subject. So what is it? The mystery remains.
Oh, yeah -- Happy Anniversary, Language Log!
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Posted by Eric Bakovic at July 29, 2004 10:53 PM