"Look less-powerful weapons"

[Randy Alexander]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 5:31 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

> On Jun 3, 2012, at 1:08 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> > Opening sentence in a WSJ article:
> >
> > "Take the nuclear option off the table, and some patents look
> less-powerful
> > weapons."
> >
> > I have never noticed this construction [N-look-N without a preposition or
> > some form of to be] before in an edited publication.
>
> _look_ 'look to be' takes a predicative AdjP in English dialects
> generally.  OED2 lists it as taking predicatives in general -- including NP
> ("he looks a fool") and PP ("he looked to be in great anxiety") -- though
> in fact these last two possibilities are usually associated with BrE rather
> than AmE.
>
> perhaps the construction with NP and PP is spreading to AmE, or perhaps
> the WSJ writer has some BrE influence in their speech.
>

I think that's a possibility, and I agree with everything above except
"look to be" being BrE.

COCA 1159/425,000,000
BNC 207/100,000,000

These numbers are pretty close, so "[look] to be" ([look] being the lemma)
would have to be said just to be "pond agnostic".

To me the WSJ quote just looks like an editing oversight.  Dan, no link?

--
Randy Alexander
Xiamen, 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

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