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African American English has a cool expression called the Ass Camouflage Construction:

  • They done arrested her stupid ass.

  • I’m gonna sue her ass.

  • Get your triflin’ ass out of here.

  • I saw his ass yesterday.

  • His ass is gonna get fried.

Would you believe this kind of construction is exactly how reflexive pronouns emerge in many the languages?

Check out this issue of the Linguistic Discovery newsletter for all the details:

The Ass Camouflage Construction
May 5
at
6:49 PM
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