[Ads-l] Be the you...

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Jun 17 20:21:29 UTC 2016


> On Jun 17, 2016, at 2:22 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> "Be the you who talks to your dermatologist about Stelara!"
> 
> So urges my TV.  This structure reminds me of the equally odd, equally
> transparent, "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee!"

Actually for me the more interesting part of that slogan is the preamble, "Everybody doesn't like something (but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee)", which does have a weird mapping between logical structure and surface form--'for every person x, there is some thing y such that it's not the case that x likes y'.  So non-straightforward that it makes you hungry for frozen pound cake.  
> 
> I think it was explained here that the Sara Lee slogan sounded quite
> weird in the mid '60s, even if today's whippersnappers say "Meh."
> 


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