"package store"

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:29 PM +0100 9/1/00, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>I don't think the wine/liquor argument about compositionality holds
>up unless you try to call a store that only sells wine a 'liquor
>store', since (a) there is a sense of 'liquor' that includes wine,
>and (b) just because a liquor store sells things that aren't liquor
>doesn't mean it's not a liquor store.  (They're not disqualified for
>selling mixers and peanuts.)  Our compositional 'formula' for 'X
>store' constructions seems to be 'store that exists to sell X'.  (And
>so clothing stores can sell wallets and umbrellas and grocery stores
>can sell cigarettes.  I suppose to some people, cigarettes are
>groceries.)

This is fun stuff to ponder, though maybe more for Lynne and me as
lexical semantics junkies than for the prototypic ads-er.  I think
there are a couple of different issues here.  We can agree that the
selling of mixers and peanuts doesn't affect whether "liquor store"
is compositional, since as you say it doesn't exist to sell those
items.  But such a store, at least in the Northeast, DOES exist to
sell wine as well as (hard) liquor, and in CT (although not NY) also
to sell beer, even though beer is also sold in supermarkets/grocery
stars.  And crucially beer and wine for many purposes are not liquor,
whence the signs on many liquor stores "Wines and Liquors".
(Doubtful you'll find too many with signs reading "Peanuts, Mixers,
and Liquors".)  The Quality Wines shop near Yale and its various
cousins elsewhere, often called "X Wines and Spirits", can also be
called liquor stores (or of course package stores); they're certainly
never called spirits stores in conversation.  Wine stores/shop(pe)s
tend to cater to a fancier or yuppier crowd than liquor stores, even
when they both stock the same genres of potables (typically, the
former will of course sell a larger, and pricier, variety of non-jug
wines than the latter will).  Note the following judgments, which
others may or may not share:

I'm going down to the {wine/liquor} store to pick up a merlot.
I'm going down to the {liquor/#wine} store to pick up a single malt.
What's your favorite liquor?  {Single-malt scotch/#Merlot}.

If this is right, it's easier for "wine stores" to count as liquor
stores than for wine to count as liquor.

>
>I don't think a store that only sold wine could be called a 'liquor
>store'--since it's not prototypical 'liquor'.

Agreed, but I've never come across such a store.  There are, as noted
above, stores called "wine stores" that sell hard liquor too; it's as
much a social distinction as one driven by inventory.

>Getting thirsty,
>Lynne

At least the sun is just about over the yardarm there in Sussex.
Some of us have to wait HOURS.

larry