Travel_ as TRANS

[Brian Hitchcock]

Indeed, I am one of those who bristle at "grow your business".  I figure
that one can "grow" potatoes, but one "enlarges", "increases" or "expands"
one's business. Anyway, thank you, Arnold, for enlightening me as what to
call the phenomenon (causativization.)

When I identified my colleague as Chinese, I meant no derogation, either to
his ethnicity or to his usage of "traveling".  It's just that I had never
heard "traveling of documents" from anyone but him, so I just thought that
one might be relevant to the other, from a standpoint of dialect analysis.

As for the prosodic optionality of the comma, I shall desist, from
commenting further, on this listserv, in regard to commas, deferring to your
erudition in the matter, in that  it's a matter  of preference, rather than
of prescription.
- Brian Hitchcock

Date:    Wed, 8 Jun 2011 15:47:16 -0700
From:    Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Travel_ as TRANS

On Jun 7, 2011, at 11:21 AM, Brian Hitchcock wrote:

> -- "Pall Mall! Finer cigarettes! And...! They are *mild*! Their
> greater length *travels* the smoke farther, on the way to your throat!"
>
> -- "'Cloning' the drive will bring along the Restore partition, so it may
be possible to travel the clone, with Restore partition, from Mac to Mac."
>
> It's not surprising that advertisers (in the 'cigarette' example) and
> IT nerds (in the 'cloning' example) misuse the verb 'travel'.  These
> groups are notorious for syntactic gaffes.  For these professions, it
> is indeed a "mild" misuse amid myriad manglings.  (Note also the
> extraneous comma after 'farther'.)

not a syntactic gaffe, though it obviously offends your sensibilities.  this
is just a causativization of an intransitive; transitive 'travel' 'cause to
travel'.

yes, lots of people object to certain (*certain*) causativizations, like
"grow" in "grow the company" 'make the company grow'.   (it's a mystery to
me who so many causativizations pass unnoticed, while others drive some
people totally up the wall.)

and the comma after "farther" is a punctuational option, conveying a
prosodic option.

> In addition, I have heard the verb 'travel' used as business jargon in
regard to paper-based workflow, thus:
>
> "This new program will minimize the traveling of documents.".
>
> (The guy from whom I heard this works with me here in America, but he
> is Chinese by birth.)

this is just an -ing nominalization of intransitive "travel".  ok, it came
to you in a business context, from a Chinese-born speaker.  how does that
make it nasty?  (there's a subtle difference here between the noun "travel"
and the noun "traveling", by the way.)

arnold

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End of ADS-L Digest - 7 Jun 2011 to 8 Jun 2011 (#2011-160)
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