an unexpected comparative

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:29 PM -0400 10/11/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Oh, now I get it. Your daughter said "butch-er," thinking [[butch]er],
>but you heard "butcher" and thought [butcher]! :-)
>

It really is quite a nice one, since the Janus-faced syntactic frame
is necessary:  "N is butcher" or "N is a butcher" would disambiguate
in opposite directions, but "N is a little butcher" works (at least
at first blush) for both.

LH
>
>On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 10:08 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      an unexpected comparative
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I ran into a couple of friends tonight when my daughter and I were
>>  picking up a takeout meal. She recognized N and R -- a long-married
>>  female couple -- but didn't remember which one was which. As we were
>>  carrying our meals home, she said,
>>
>>  Daughter: "I'm sorry, I'm terrible with names. Which one was N and
>>which was R?"
>>  Me: "So am I. When I first met them I had to use the mnemonic that N's
>>  name is longer than R's. N is more heavyset; R is slender."
>>  D: "Ah, N is a little butcher."
>>  M: "What?!!"
>>  D: "She wears her hair short, and..."
>>  M: [LOL in the middle of the street]
>>  D: "What's so funny?"
>>  M: "I didn't hear that as a comparative at all!!"
>>
>>  Mark A. Mandel
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
>--
>-Wilson
>---
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"--a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-Mark Twain
>
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