Y’all up on yo?

Following up on an old favorite: “Quintero’s mother, Elaine Stotko, shares this interest. A linguistics expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, she was fascinated when in 2004 a teacher in her Linguistics for Teachers class asked, ‘Have you ever heard kids using “yo” when they mean he or she?’ —About half the teachers taking the course had also heard ‘yo’ used in this way, leading Stotko and Margaret Troyer (one of the teachers) to research this development, which they have now documented in the linguistics journal American Speech.” —New Scientist [via]