I was listening to an NPR production on "A Way with Words," and it reminded me of Wordcrafters. The question was from a husband who was in trouble with his wife for saying, "I am going over Alicia's house." He omits the "to" when he uses "over." The hosts asked him what the big deal was since he knew what his wife mean. They also indicated that there is a regionalism in the northeast and Michigan where they tend to omit the preposition in that context.

I have never heard anyone say he/she is going "over _____'s house," omitting the "to." Have you? Is it really a regionalism? The program hosts seemed to think, while it wasn't that common, that it is used a fair amount.

Sounds perfectly OK to me.

"I'm going over Bob's house," sounds perfectly OK to you? It sounds odd to me. Yes, I'd understand that you're not flying over the house because of the context, but it still sounds odd.

As long as you're not going over to Baby Daddy house.

It does occur. I googled "go over somebody's house" and got 52k ghits. It may be AAVE.

That's interesting. Maybe! I only heard this on an NPR show so I didn't see the ethnicity of the people.

How do you get google hits without getting all the superfluous things?

Would this be related to Rosemary Clooney's song "Come On-a My House"?

quote:

Rosemary Clooney's song "Come On-a My House"?

The theme song from "The fifty-foot Italian pervert."

quote:

Would this be related to Rosemary Clooney's song "Come On-a My House"?

I am not sure, Neveu. The "on-a" almost sounds Italian. But then it would be "on-a to my house." So maybe you are right that the "to" is deleted as in the "over to" situations.

Someone posed a similar question to The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Here is the exchange:

quote:

Q. I am from Pittsburgh and was informed that instead of “The clothes need to be washed,” I am saying, “The clothes need washed.” Is “The clothes need washed” an incorrect or incomplete sentence?

A. Appearance in published books is one way to gauge the relative formality of an expression. If you type “need washed, need washing, need to be washed” into Google’s Ngram Viewer, which surveys millions of books published over the last two hundred years, you’ll see that “need washed” didn’t gain in currency until about twenty years ago, and that the other expressions are much more strongly favored, with “need to be washed” used twice as much as “need washing.”

I've got to remember that Ngram Viewer. It's pretty amazing. Thanks, Tinman!

Well, I learned about Ngram Viewer from this board. Arnie, Z and you have all talked about it in the past.

I'm pleased to see that Google has improved the Ngram viewer in several ways, adding quite a lot of new functions.

Like what, arnie? I've not used it, and I think I should!

Well, most of the text on the help page linked by tinman gives details of many of the changes, so I won't repeat that here. One thing I especially like the look of is that you can search for words and append a modifier for a particular part of speech. I also like the fact that the corpora have been extended to 2010; 2000 was a little far in the past.