"Methamphetamine prose"

Randy Alexander strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
Thu May 6 01:04:29 UTC 2010


On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Back in the '70's I read an article about speed that contained an
> anecdote something like this:
>
> Instead of working on 25-page paper due at eight o'clock the next
> morning, guy is getting down with his old lady. Suddenly, he remembers
> about the paper and freaks. ...


I don't know why, but in contrast to most people on this list, who seem to
be more attracted to lexicographic phenomena, I seem to be more attracted to
syntactic phenomena.

Googling "remember about" and looking at the first ten results, all of them
have "remember" as a transitive verb where the object is fronted, and "about
X" is a modifier.  But here, Wilson is using "remember" as an intransitive
verb, with "about X" as a complement.

Does anyone have anything to say about the distribution of this usage?

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list