hypercorrection/grammatical evolution (was: murky days)

[Lynne Murphy]

Yes, but might hypercorrection lead to syntactic reanalysis?  Perhaps this
will evolve so that all relative 'who's become 'whom's, for example.  (Just
like the plural form seems to be evolving to apostrophe-s, but we've been
down that road enough times...)

Then there's the old favorite "...and I", never "...and me" in my mother's
variety (which seems like a decent argument for Construction Grammar).  It
sort of brings into question the idea of 'impossible lexical items'.  Was
it Jim McCawley who used the example of "my uncle and" as an impossible
lexical item?  So "X and" is an impossible lexical item, but we've got
definite examples of (phrasal) lexical items of the form "and X" ("and I",
"and so forth", "et cetera")--which I suppose has to do with English being
a head-initial language?

Just musing, if not amusing,
Lynne

--On Thursday, March 28, 2002 11:40 am -0500 Drew Danielson
<andrew.danielson at CMU.EDU> wrote:

> It sounds more like hypercorrection to me.  It would be interesting to
> be able to track the WHOM-misuser's WHO/WHOM usage across time and
> context....
>
>
> "Peter A. McGraw" wrote:
>>
>> "Whom" in this context (subject of a subordinate clause which itself is
>> the object of a preposition or the main-clause verb) is suddenly running
>> rampant.  I hear it so often (especially from academics and journalists,
>> it seems) that I wonder if a syntactic reanalysis of some sort is
>> actually taking root.
>>
>> Peter Mc.
>>
>> --On Thursday, March 28, 2002 7:35 AM -0500 "Dennis R. Preston"
>> <preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> wrote:
>>
>> >> Ther are many traps for WHOMers (one of the most important
>> >> sociolinguistic subgroups in US society) out there; this one
>> >> obviosuly fell prey to the rule "use 'whom' after a preposition."
>> >> Didn't this guy's mom tell him to look left AND right before
>> >> attaching an -m?
>> >
>> > dInIs
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> from a letter today (3/27/02) to the New York Times, from
>> >> Marc F. Bernstein, Chief Academic Officer, Kaplan K12
>> >> Learning Services, New York, about funding for New York City
>> >> schools:
>> >>
>> >>  Regardless of whom should be blamed, it's the students who
>> >>  will suffer.
>> >>
>> >> i wonder if he'd have committed himself to something like
>> >>  Regardless of whom is blamed,...
>> >>
>> >> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>> >
>> > --
>> > Dennis R. Preston
>> > Department of Linguistics and Languages
>> > Michigan State University
>> > East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
>> > preston at pilot.msu.edu
>> > Office: (517)353-0740
>> > Fax: (517)432-2736
>>
>> ************************************************************************
>> **** Peter A. McGraw
>>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu
>
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Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320