Something else!

[Wilson Gray]

Back in the day, I had a Japanese classmate. After a lecture, he asked
about the person whose theories had just been condemned. I say,
"Lakoff." He began to write, "R-A ..." I say, No. It's *Lakoff*. Oh,
okay, he says, and starts to write, "R-A ,,," To make a short story
short, I just write the name down for him. Oh!, he says. The name is
*RAY-cough*!

Back in tin minutes.

-Wilson

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Something else!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9:25 PM -0400 9/15/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>  >From the Times of New York:
>>
>>"_It is quite something else_ for the very management that is accused
>>of having lied to its shareholders to determine how much of those
>>victims' money should be used to make the case against the management
>>go away," Judge [Jed S. Rakoff wrote.
>>
>>
>>This use of _something else_ really *is* something else. Of course, if
>>there were more context, it might turn out to be merely apparent [Take
>>that, Joel!] that the judge has so internalized this slang expression
>>as to use it in formal writing without noticing it and redacting it.
>>
>>-Wilson
>
> No Wilson, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you
> (and myself).  As you suspected, this quote is
> linked anaphorically, although not in the Times
> excerpt.  The full(er) context is:
>
> "It is one thing for management to exercise its
> business judgemtn to determine how much of its
> shareholders [sic] money should be used to settle
> a case brought by former shareholders or third
> parties. It is quite something else for... [etc.
> as supra]"
> http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/bofaorder914.pdf
>
> No slang here from Judge Rakoff, however angry he
> may have been.  But his name reminds me of the
> old days in generative grammar circles when the
> two bête noires of generative semantics, the
> movement of anti-Chomskyan dissenters, were
> (George) Lakoff and (Haj) Ross, but sometimes
> (deliberately or not) Spoonerized to Rakoff and
> Loss.  Seems very appropriate under the current
> circumstances.
>
> LH
>
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--
-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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