blind sighted

[Lynne Murphy]

Another contributing factor may be the existence of the term 'blind sight',
for the ability of neurologically blind people to subconsciously see.  I
saw a talk on this by some famous British neuroscientist a few years
ago--it was fascinating.  His name, obviously, escapes me.

Lynne

--On Tuesday, March 13, 2001 4:28 pm -0500 Herb Stahlke
<HSTAHLKE at GW.BSU.EDU> wrote:

> I found the following in a posting on the MSNBC letters list,
> referring to Katie Couric's interview of Charlton Heston:
>
> "He parted the Red Sea and a little girl half his size blind
> sighted him??? He put himself in the position by being the head of
> the NRA."
>
> In my speech, with Canadian Raising, I distinguish between the
> diphthongs of "sided" and "sighted."  I found this collocation
> with the meaning of "surprised" in only a few cases in two web
> searches, with different search engines.  Is it simply a phonetic
> confusion, or is the expression gaining ground?
>
> Herb Stahlke



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