Someone once commented on my use of the world "yet," a poly-linguistic wierdo friend of mine who married a woman from Argentina because Spanish was the only language he didn't, at the time, speak fluently, and within two years he was teaching philosophy, at University level, in Spanish, in Puerto Rico. Complete freak. But he picked up on my use of "yet" as particularly midwestern, and I've noticed it here a lot.
The standard uses of "yet" in English all occur in negative phrases - "haven't done it yet," "hasn't stopped yet," that kind of thing. The midwestern variation is to adopt the word for positive phrases as well, to mean either "now" or "still". I'll fill in examples as I hear them - one was on the breakfast news on CBS this morning, should have written it down. But, like, "I've got to read all these emails yet." Or "The weather's quite warm yet."
Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, the phrase I used that attracted comment from my polylinguist friend was "any more". But the principle is exactly the same - usually used in English in negative phrases, e.g. "Don't come around much any more," but midwesterners use it in positive ones too - "I come around here all the time any more."
Maybe that's a Nebraska thing, and "yet" is a Wisconsin thing. I'l have to listen and see.
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"It's hanging there yet." - cousin
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"We have some money yet in the budget." - co-worker
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