[Ads-l] material on "is is", "double is", etc.

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sat Nov 19 13:54:41 UTC 2016


> On Nov 18, 2016, at 9:30 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Coppock and Staum (2004) argue against a “silent what” analysis on the
> grounds that it cannot explain the presence of is in sentences like (10),
> which they take to be of the same species as the double-IS construction:
> 
> 10) That can’t be a very welcome outcome, is that rates will now rise.
> 
> I'm an is-is speaker - somebody pointed it out to me; naturally, I was
> unaware of it - and, FWIW, (10) strikes me as just ungrammatical

i would say that (10) is certainly a species of Extris, but it's very much not an instance of the Isis species.  it's well known (and commented on in my "Extris, extris" handout) that Isis speakers (i'm one too, like you, and President Obama, and others i cite) don't necessary produce (or find acceptable) any of the other species.  i find (10) as weird as you do, but there are clearly speakers who produce (and accept) such things happily

arnold

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