pre-purchased

[Dennis R. Preston]

Lynne,

Have you learned to eat yearbooks in Sussex?

But, on-topic, I don't find making the distinction between stuff you
paid for and ain't got yet and stuff you paid for and done got
useless, and I think Bethany meant for "prepaid" to be the slightly
less fancy synonym of "prepurchased."

Could we have some lexical semantic explanation (unless, as is so
often the case, it is something lurking in the phonology) of why they
both sound real good to me and "prebought" sounds awful.

dInIs


>--On Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:55 pm -0700 FRITZ JUENGLING
><juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> wrote:
>
>>>Pre-purchased because you're not actually in possession of the thing you
>>>purchased yet--ownership of the yearbook is still vague (the payer 'owns'
>>>it without having it).
>>
>>Yes, the meaning is clear, but when you order something thru the mail and
>>send along payment, but have not received the item, would you say that
>>you have "pre-purchased" it until it shows up? Fritz
>
>You'd usually say you'd 'ordered' it, because in the mail-order context,
>the fact that you've paid when ordering is usually understood.  But outside
>that context, 'order' doesn't work--when I order a sandwich, I don't pay
>for it until it's arrived.  So you need something different to say in a
>situation like buying yearbooks or girl scout cookies in anticipation of
>receiving them much later.
>
>As usual, my examples have made me hungry.
>
>Lynne
>
>
>Dr M Lynne Murphy
>Lecturer in Linguistics
>Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
>School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
>University of Sussex
>Brighton BN1 9QH
>UK
>
>phone +44-(0)1273-678844
>fax   +44-(0)1273-671320

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
740 Wells Hall A
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office - (517) 353-0740
Fax - (517) 432-2736