Sheidlower in NY Times

[jester at PANIX.COM]

> Along with its modifying of non-modifiables (as in not only "You are
> SO hired" but "You are SO fired", which I'm sure I've heard on
> Friends at least once), there's also the striking (at least to me)
> ability of the gen-X SO to take negated adjectives within its scope:
> That is SO not cool.  Needless to say, normal intensifying adverbs
> (e.g. VERY) can't do this, but as far as I know neither does
> intensifying WAY (way cool/#way not cool).

e.g.,

2000 Sunday Herald (Glasgow) 30 Apr. (Seven Days section) 3/7
The book is so not dead. It's, like, totally awesome.

1997 New York Mag. 25 Aug. 152/3 Napoleons are so not fun to eat.

> On another point, at the very end of the wonderful Times profile
> (just to the right of the facial encounter from--what movis IS it
> from, can anyone say?), Jesse describes--(or is quoted as
> describing--DISAMBIGUATE as a verb "mostly used in computational
> lexicography".  Is it really that restricted?  Generative, and
> probably pre-generative, linguists have been disambiguating lexical
> items and syntactic structures under that name since at least the
> early 1960's, judging by the OED cite from _Language_ and my own
> recollections within the field, and I'd like to think computational
> lexicographers still make up a minority of its wielders.

I think this is best attributed to my "without a second's hesitation".
It is certainly more widespread than computational lexicography.

JTS