Salt and pepper revisited

[Laurence Horn]

>Another source on this topic is Cooper and Ross's 1975 CLS paper
>"World Order".  They call these constructions "freezes".  Check the
>ADS-L archives for a discussion several years ago (Feb. 2-3 1996)
>about freezes.
>
>Tricia

Yes, actually that was the paper I cited a couple of times in our
recent thread on the topic (see e.g. my posting of 5/17), but I was
just speculating then that there must have been work done on it
since.  The Wright et al. paper starts with Cooper & Ross (and the
even earlier treatment of "irreversible binominals" by Yakov Malkiel)
but carries it forward from there.  The "me first" stuff in Cooper &
Ross is a lot of fun, though.

Larry

>
>>>>  laurence.horn at YALE.EDU 05/25/05 11:31 AM >>>
>I just downloaded and took a quick look at this, but it seems to be
>directly relevant to our discussion and has a very comprehensive
>bibliography on freezes or irreversible binomials:
>
>Wright, Saundra, Jennifer Hay & Tessa Bent (2005).  Ladies first?
>Phonology, frequency, and the naming conspiracy.  Linguistics 43:
>531-61.
>
>While the authors look at various factors--semantic, social, and
>phonological--that conspire to put male names first in two-name
>sequences, they also discuss the phenomenon in more general terms,
>with lots of statistical support.  Along the way (p. 534) they note
>that:
>
>========
>English displays a strong preference for alternating beats (Selkirk
>1984).  These beats are organized into a trochaic foot structure, and
>feet are generally aligned to the left (e.g. Hayes 1995)...[T]he
>optimal phrasing for a binominal expression should be one that
>preserves an alternating, preferably trochaic, stress structure.  For
>example, salt and pepper displays perfect trochaic structure.
>However, pepper and salt does not.
>========
>
>and so on.  This paper would seem to be the first place to look for
>anyone toiling in these green and growing (#growing and green) fields.
>
>Larry