etymology - Reflexive love: where does "love me some ..." come from?


It seems trendy to use a reflexive-like construction with love or hate plus some, like this:




  • You know I love me some cheese!




  • I hate me some cold and the temperature is dropping.




Where did this come from and why has it become popular?



Answer



To give it a name, the construction is called the "Personal Dative" and is loosely attributed to African American Vernacular English and some other Southern white dialects. The construction, as in your example, works with a typically non-reflexive verb (popular verbs in these dialects are simple: get, find, have, use, take, love, buy, shoot, and kill, which is kilt in the past tense) and a subject pronoun. PDs in 1st person singular are most common, and PDs in 2nd person are more common than 3rd person.


1st Person:



I had me a man in summertime/He had summer-colored skin (Joni Mitchell, “Urge for Going”)



2nd Person:



Get you a copper kettle, O get you a copper coil, Cover with new-made corn mash and never more you’ll toil. You just lay there by the junipers, when the moon is bright, Watch them jugs a-fillin’ in the pale moonlight. (“Copper Kettle”, traditional ballad)



3rd Person:



Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, The greenest state in the land of the free, Raised in the woods so’s he knew every tree, Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three. (“Ballad of Davy Crockett”; cf. M. Lewis 2002)



There is debate over whether the PD is an indirect object, as it appears in an example like:



I caught me some fish.



Or, if it is a pronoun, as it appears in this example with a true indirect object:



I caught me some fish for my family.



Other things worth noting about this dialectical usage of the PD are:


1.) There is no passive construction. "Some fish were caught (to) me."


2.) PDs cannot be split apart from the verb that marks them. "I caught some fish, me."


3.) They are always unstressed. "I CAUGHT me some fish" and not "I caught ME some fish."


4.) Deciding on the pronomial status of the PD has become more difficult with the evolution of the newly-popularized X's-ass construction. [Bear with me] "I have a 152 IQ and I love my ass some red meat." This X's ass construction apparently does not show up in 3rd person constructions and rarely in 2nd person.


Dating it is extremely difficult, as Robusto mentions, and many of the earliest references are traditional ballads and folk songs.


For a thorough discussion on the topic, check out this link.


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