Fwd: cubic gallons

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:23 PM -0700 9/24/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>apparently, this went only to Wilson...
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
>>Date: September 22, 2005 11:48:23 AM PDT
>>To: Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
>>Subject: Re: cubic gallons
>>
>>On Sep 22, 2005, at 11:19 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>>FWIW, back in the '70's, there was a company that sold liquid
>>>hand-cleaner in containers whose content it referred to as "four
>>>liters - one metric gallon." I thought that was pretty cool.
>>>Unfortunately, Weights & Measures did not agree and the company
>>>had to
>>>simplify the statement of content to the far more prosaic "four
>>>liters." My feeling is that, if there can be metric tons, why not
>>>also
>>>metric gallons? For the average Joe Blow working a job that requires
>>>the use of a special hand-cleaner, "one metric gallon" probably makes
>>>more sin... uh, sense than "four liters."
>>
>>i was about to post something similar.  "metric X", where X is a
>>unit in some non-metric system of measurement, has a fairly easy-to-
>>interpret meaning, namely 'measure close to and therefore analogous
>>to X in the metric system'.
>>
>>i'm still baffled by "cubic gallon" and "cubic liter", however.
>>maybe "cubic" is supposed to convey 'measure of volume', in which
>>case the expressions are pleonastic  -- but sometimes people like
>>to pile on extra reminders of meaning.
>>
>>the meanings analogous to "square acre" 'something that is both an
>>acre (in area) and a square (in shape)' -- namely 'something that
>>is both a gallon/liter (in volume) and a cube (in shape)'

Yes, but as noted, "square acre(s)" *very* rarely has that meaning;
it's much more often simply pleonastic.  I take it to be a phrasal
analogue to "unthaw", "unloosen", "debone", and other cases of
redundant morphology when the formally redundant addition makes the
meaning clear (viz. that we're talking privative actions,
two-dimensional figures, or volumes, as the case may be).   Plus in
the case of "square acre", that assimilates this case to others like
"square inch", "square foot", "square yard", "square mile",
etc.--"square" here can be interpreted across the board as a signal
for two-dimensionality, which is would also be in "square acre" even
though there's no unsquare counterpart in that case.  "Square" is
thus non-restrictive here.

Oops, I see on rereading the relevant first paragraph that this is
almost exactly what arnold was positing on his "maybe" interpretation
above.  What he said.

larry

>>-- make
>>sense, but, as jon lighter pointed out, they don't seem appropriate
>>to the original context.  and anyway, they're better expressed by
>>"gallon cube" and "liter cube".
>>
>>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)