"package store"

[Lynne Murphy]

>At 03:53 PM 9/1/2000 +0100, Greg Downing wrote:
>
>This raises a possibly interesting methodological question. Naturally,
>"package store" will tend to appear entirely or almost entirely in some
>portion of the localities where the law requires that alcoholic beverages be
>sold in closed packages. Those laws vary from locality to locality. Such
>localities seem to be dotted around the country. Is there really such a
>thing as polka-dot regionalism, by which I mean not a few puddles of usage
>-- that's common enough -- but rather, given the local variation in laws,
>maybe hundreds of such puddles that are for some reason to be construed as
>isolated puddles of regional usage rather a single fairly widespread usage
>that applies wherever the state of the law creates the thing to which the
>word applies, in the absence of which there is of course no need for
currency or usage?

I notice that the AHD doesn't have it as a regionalism, but the
definition make no reference to any laws that would have to hold in a
region in order for its liquor stores to be called 'package stores'.
If we imagine that use of 'package store' is found in a checkerboard
pattern across America, and in the places where they don't use
'package store', they don't understand it, is 'package store' a
regionalism?  I'd say yes, and perhaps we could even say it's many
regionalisms (because it's used in many regions).  But say the
opposite parts of the checkerboard say 'liquor store'--is that a
regionalism?  It's understood by the 'package store' people because
its meaning is compositional, but it's not used by them.  That's the
tougher one to answer for me.  And I'm probably totally biased by the
fact that I grew up with liquor stores and only encountered package
stores when I started studying linguistics.  (Incidentally, does
anywhere in America call these things "off-licenses"?)


>In any event, it seems clear that "package store is
>simply a CT/NE regionalism (and, by implication, no knowledgeable person
>would try to make anything more of it)" is not a completely satisfactory
>explanation.

Explanation for what?  If the original question was "why did
Lieberman say 'package store'?" then I think it is a satisfactory
explanation!

Lynne
--
Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH UK
phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax    +44-(0)1273-671320