[ADS-L] conduction

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Fri Sep 29 18:15:07 UTC 2006


On Sep 29, 2006, at 9:04 AM, Gerald Cohen wrote:

> One possible reason: because it's a  blend: "under the direction of" +
> "conducted by."

it's possible that the expression is an inadvertent blend in some of
its occurrences, but we've already seen that there are people -- ron
butters, in particular -- for whom it's just the extension of the -(t)
ion nominalizing suffix to the verb "conduct [an orchestra]" (in
ignorance of the fact that few other people* have this derivative for
this particular verb "conduct", though we have such a derivative from
"conduct [heat. electricity, nerve signals]").  the psychological
mechanisms are very different: competition between two plans in
speech production vs. use of morphological patterns.

arnold

[* the wikipedia article says, cagily, "At times, it may also refer
to: The activity done by the conductor of an orchestra"]

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