singular "small fry"

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:19 PM -0500 12/19/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  At 9:42 AM -0800 12/19/08, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>  ... (plus references to
>>  >french fries, as in "How many calories in a small fry from
>>  >McDonalds?" , where the reference is to a small order of french fries).
>>  >
>>  >arnold
>>
>>  For me, that last has to be "a small fries", but I suppose that must
>>  crash some speakers' mental grammar check.
>
>Unless the question actually referred to one small French-fry -- one
>piece/stick/Stück.
>
Hard (although not impossible) to take it that
way, given that there's no well-defined category
of a small
french-fried-potato-Stück-from-McDonald's to
which an average calorie content could be
assigned, as opposed to that of a small
Pepsi-from-McDonald's.

LH

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