clones (was: "Don't call us, we'll call you" (1963))

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Apr 1 13:47:24 UTC 2001


>DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU
>
>    OED News, July 1997, asked for any pre-1987 cites for "Don't call
>us, we'll call you."
>    This is why they pay me the big bucks.
>    From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE MAGAZINE, 16 June 1963, pg. 4:
>
>_"Don't call us, we'll call you..."
>But the young actor can't sit and wait for the big break   he must
>go out and seek it, however wearying the hunt.
>
>(Pg. 5, col. 2 photo caption--ed.)
>Terry winds up his morning "job job" as conductor of a Grey Line bus tour.
>
Nice example of a lexical clone, too.  I wonder if these were really
around much earlier than '63.  I certainly don't recall these clones
or doubles being as robust a phenomenon when I was growing up, but I
can't say they didn't exist at all.  Unfortunately, this is hard to
check with the feeble search procedures I know how to use--Nexis
doesn't go back that far, and the years it covers can't easily be
searched for "job job", to take one random example, without pulling
in all the "jobs and jobs" or "job to job" hits that are irrelevant
to the construction in question, and of course any attempt to search
for "X X for variable X" are hopeless.  Anyone have any suggestions
on how to proceed if one wished to trace the history of the clone
construction in English via cites?

larry



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