different to and from

[Martin Votruba]

> The only "3.9" I found in the
> statistics that Alina cites is for _different than_ (spoken UK)

Sorry, Loren, I made a mistake.  The table's a bit disorganized in my 
mailer, I copied a wrong column, and got confused to boot.  I should 
have copied 0.6 from "US speech - to"  and compared it to 27.3 from 
"UK speech - to."

Meaning: even if 100% of the recorded US occurrences of _different 
to_ were of the type _They may be the same to you, but they're 
different to me_ (I'll call it "B" here), we would still be left with 
(27.3 minus 0.6 equals) 26.7% occurrences of _different to_ in 
British English where _to_ most likely indicates comparison unless we 
assume that statements "B" occur substantially more often in British 
English than in American English.

In other words, the frequency of statements "B" cannot be higher than 
0.6% in American English and therefore is unlikely to be 
substantially higher in British English unless we assume that the 
Brits say "B" multiple times more often than the Americans.  The 
frequency of "B" can probably be disregarded.

We don't disagree about the general issue.


Martin

votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------