Grammar Girl here. I'm Inyon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, I have a bunch of fun follow-ups from things that came up in recent episodes. Back in episode 1027, when I interviewed forensic linguist Natalie Schilling

about how criminals' language can give them away, one of the answers was that criminals

provide clues when they use regionalisms and don't realize they're doing it. These are words

that are used only by people from certain locations, and she mentioned that she uses what linguists call the positive anymore, and for years didn't realize it wasn't widespread.

And a few of you asked me for more information about the positive anymore. So here's a segment on that by Neil Whitman.

In July 1994, the New Yorker published a short piece by Jack Winter called How I Met My Wife.

The story is a barrage of sentences like this one.

I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to.

Sentences like this one sound odd because the idioms in it are

usually used in negative sentences. For example, that's nothing to sneeze at, or the movie is okay,

but it can't hold a candle to the book. Because of this restriction, linguists call words and phrases like these negative polarity

items. Actually, that name is not entirely accurate since negative polarity items also

occurring questions, like, is that anything to sneeze at? Or in a few other constructions,

such as few books can hold a candle to Pilke's Captain

Underpants series. Still, negative polarity items or NPI's is the name that's stuck. And not all

NPIs are idioms. One of the most common NPI's in English is the word any. You can say, I didn't see any turtles, or do you have

any gum, or few people have any idea what goes on here. But sentences like, I saw any turtles,

she has any gum, and lots of people have any idea what goes on here, they just don't make sense.

However, there's one NPI in English that in some dialects has broken free of negations and

questions. It's the word anymore. Just about every English speaker will accept anymore as a negative polarity item in sentences like,

I don't love you anymore, or why don't we ever go out anymore.

On the other hand, most English speakers stumble over sentences like these.

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