<html>
<body>
<font size=3>At 3/15/2007 01:05 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">I'm not sure why we'd want to
regard this as a blend, rather than an<br>
asyndetic ("or"-less) disjunction. Compare "there
were two-three<br>
problems to work out". The sense would then be "X or even
Y", where<br>
Y is stronger than X--not a regular formation (*the happy ecstatic<br>
children) but not totally implausible.<br><br>
In any case, the 178,000 hits for "severe life threatening"
(with or<br>
without hyphen, and typically modifying (asthma or malaria) suggests<br>
it's become a collocation for many, despite the apparent
redundancy</blockquote><br>
Interesting. Although I didn't hear the the missing hyphen when
this was spoken. Also, there is something stranger than
"severe life-threatening asthma" in the unspecified
"severe life-threatening injuries".<br><br>
Joel</font></body>
</html>
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org