Puzzling blend

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sat May 29 19:55:52 UTC 2010


At 7:46 PM +0000 5/29/10, RonButters wrote:
>Maybe this is because "rebuilding" is merely an empty phrase when
>applied to this years Indians, who are worse off this year than last
>year (when they fired the entire coaching staff, traded away ther
>best players, and replaced them with the current bozos).
>Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

With the Tribe over the last few years (since the '07 playoffs), it
must seem to fans like it's not just a rebuilding phrase, more like a
rebuilding sentence.

LH

>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
>Date:         Sat, 29 May 2010 14:05:08
>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Subject:      [ADS-L] Puzzling blend
>
>I was out and about running errands, and had the Yankees game on in the
>car. Doing the set-up for the game, Suzyn Waldman, the Yankees color
>analyst, described the Indians as being in a "rebuilding phrase" (yes,
>with an unmistakeable /r/). Just as I decided that it was an obvious
>speech error, she said it again, again with an unmistakeable /r/ in
>"rebuilding phrase". In neither case was there an obvious source for the
>/r/ (perseveration from the initial /r/ in rebuilding isn't all that
>likely, given the different syllable structure. I didn't notice a Cr-
>cluster later in the discussion either. My imagination is, likewise,
>failing me with regard to analyzing this as an eggcorn of sorts.
>

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