I decided to plug in four relevant strings* into COHA and see what's what:
gonna
nada. zip. zilch. bupkiss.
woulda
coulda
shoulda
With the exception of gonna, they show the same pattern of a rise in frequency throughout the 20th Century, and all were in use in the 1960s for sure. Now I suspect this rise in frequency has more to do with editing than language use. I suspect it has gradually become more and more acceptable to print these forms in publications. The mystery remains why gonna did not come along for the ride.
*note that I literally mean strings, not words. There are potentially other spellings of these forms.
4 comments:
fwiw, Wordnik shows gonna was in its heyday in the 60's: http://www.wordnik.com/words/gonna
Nice. I need to use Wordnik more.
The reason you couldn't find gonna in COHA is probably tokenization. You get a picture similar to the others if you type in gon na.
doh! Peter, this makes sense. Shoulda coulda woulda thunk it myself too. Brain fart, hehe.
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