Five times less

[Bill Palmer]

Very helpful & interesting reading, Arnold, and thanx. I have a corollary.

On the local AM radio station, I was informed that the murder rate in North
Carolina had "declined by over 100%".  One can muddle thru a "five times
less" construction and figure out what was meant, but how is it possible to
reduce something by more than 100%?

Bill P.







----- Original Message -----
From: "Arnold Zwicky" <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 10:26 AM
Subject: Re: Five times less


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Five times less
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On May 22, 2009, at 6:32 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at BELLSOUTH.NET>
>> Subject:      Five times lwss
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> In a letter to the editor of the Raleigh News & Observer today, a
>> writer
>> complains that her salary is "five times less" than that of the city
>> manager.  So how does one perform that calculation?
>>
>> Is this more arithmetic than language?
>
> we had some considerable discussion of the matter here back in the
> fall of 2007 (which i can't at the moment examine, because the server
> seems to be unavailable).  but there's some discussion here:
>
> AZ, 8/9/08: Recency:
>  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463
>
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