which we're going to get through this

Cohen, Gerald Leonard gcohen at MST.EDU
Thu Jun 4 14:54:59 UTC 2009


Arnold's first example looks like a syntactic blend to me:
   ("Actually I drank some green Bigalow tea, which I was
surprised at how good it was.")
 
From: "... I drank some green Bigalow tea, which was surprisingly good." plus "... I drank some green Bigalow tea , and I was surprised at how good it was."
 
Gerald Cohen

________________________________

Original message: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold Zwicky, Thu 6/4/2009 9:27 AM:

On Jun 4, 2009, at 6:38 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> Herb wrote, " I don't remember hearing it used much by college
> educated
> speakers.  The social contexts have been working class."
>
> "Working class" may be correct, but I can't count the times I've
> read this
> construction on freshman themes since the '70s. And in speech, of
> course, it
> remains common.
>
> OTOH, conjunctive "which" in my experience means "and," though
> Herb's ex.
> sounds more like "but."  That would be new to me.
>
> Arnold undoubtedly knows of some analytical articles.

i wish i did.  in fact, i've asked about literature on the subject
several times here on ADS-L!

at the moment i have only two examples in my collection, but then i
came to collecting odd relative clauses only recently, and my
attention has mostly been focused on relatives with resumptive
pronouns in them and on "characterizing" restrictive relatives.

reported on sci.lang 1/25/07:
   Imus : Actually I drank some green Bigalow tea, which I was
surprised at how good it was.

Woody Allen, "Tails of Manhattan", New Yorker 3/30/09, p. 29:
    "Tell me about it," Moe Silverman said. "I played golf with the
man in Florida, which incidentally he'll move the ball with his foot
if you're not watching."

arnold

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