animacy and spatial terms

[Michele Feist]

Dear George,

These are certainly the kinds of examples I'm interested in; thanks for
sending them on!

I'm not familiar with Postal's live/non-live distinction; could you send
me a reference so I could read more about it?  Also, do you know of any
references for work that's looked at the kinds of contrasts you mentioned?

Thanks again for all your help!

Michele

On Mon, 22 Jun 1998, George Lakoff wrote:

> Dear Michelle,
>
> Is this the kind of thing you have in mind:
>
> In English, you can say "I went to the President" but not "*I'm at the
> President."
> Compare "I went to the White House" and "I'm at the White House."
>
> Suppose Harry is lying on the ground. You can say
>         My jacket is across Harry
> if it is on top of him stretched across him, but not if it is on the other
> side of him. Compare with
>         My glass is across the table
>         *My glass is across Harry
> The latter is out even if Harry is stretched out on the floor and my glass
> is on the other side of him.
>         By the way, Postal's old live/nonlive distinction does not occur in
> this case:
>         *My glass is across the corpse.
> is no good, even if the corse is spread out in front of you on the floor
> and your glass is on the other side.
>
> English is a good language to look at for such phenomena.
>
> Incidentally, metaphor matters here. "He's always at his mother" works only
> in the metaphorical sense of "at."
> Compare with "He's always at his mother's"  and "He always goes to his mother."
>
> Other interesting phenomena:
>         I came across Harry.
> cannot be used if you ran into him on the street. It works fine if Harry is
> treated as an object:
>         I came across Harry unconscious in a dumpster.
> Here Postal's live/nonlive distinction does matter. If you came across
> Harry's dead body, you can't describe it as
>         I came across Harry in the morgue.
>
> English is fun.
>
>
> Enjoy!
>
> George
>
>
>

Michele Feist
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208

m-feist at nwu.edu