[Lexicog] corpus + cognitive linguistics. WAS: Interesting lexical discoveries

[William J Poser]

At least in my usage, "I wrote my car off" and "My car was totalled"
are not synonymous. The former means that the damage was sufficient
that I decided that it was not worthwhile to repair it. The latter
means that the vehicle was completely destroyed. The damage may in
fact have been somewhat less, but still it means that the damage was
both severe and widespread. A vehicle damaged only in certain areas
may rationally be written off even though it is not totalled. Indeed,
a true statement about my previous vehicle is: "Although it was not totalled,
they (the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia) wrote it off."
In this case, the damage was only to the front and was in principle
reparable, but the adjuster told me that when he reached $10,000 in repair
cost he discontinued his estimate and wrote the vehicle off because
it was clear that the cost of repair would exceed the value of the
vehicle.

--
Bill Poser, Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wjposer/ billposer at alum.mit.edu



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