Abstract
the infinitive in a fixin' to construction, such as get in She's fixin' to get to work on her homework; and possibilities of ambiguity of the infinitive phrase, such as to get into big trouble in He's fixin' to get into big trouble. Clues for interpretation are also provided by the speaker's tone of voice and the social context, the relationship between speaker and addressee, and the circumstances under which a conversation takes place in a given situation. This Southernism is thus a complex expression used in a variety of settings with different meanings. I discovered the complexity when my undergraduate and graduate students pointed out that fixin' to cannot replace shall or will or be going to in a number of instances and when one student dogmatically asserted that she usesfixin' to to delay an action although the rest of the class said that the phrase signifies immediate action.
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