more weird prep-dropping and/or subcategorization

Victor aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jan 5 03:40:24 UTC 2009


Not to beat a dead horse, but when others declined or withdrew earlier,
at least some headlines reported "X withdraws from contention for ..."
or "withdraws his name from being considered for...". But "withdrawing
from the nomination" does not sound so bad if you consider "nomination"
becoming a sort of title (like President-elect). It's hard to merely
"decline" once one has "accepted the nomination". Perhaps "withdraws the
acceptance"? But that is just beginning to sound silly. The usual
headline syntax contraction here--I've seen worse (as have we all).

    VS-)

Laurence Horn wrote:
> I don't recall this construction before, with the nominee withdrawing
> his own nomination to a cabinet position, although I'm not sure I
> could say "withdrawing from his nomination" either.  I guess I'd use
> "decline".  Or something.   But for me, only the President-Elect (or
> President-Select, as Rush Limbaugh and his ilk like to call him)
> could withdraw Richardson's nomination, assuming the nomination
> itself really exists in the first place before Obama is sworn in.

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