NYT Goofup is a syntactic blend

[Gerald Cohen]

At 11:52 AM, 3/17/02, James Mullan wrote:
>>From the Net edition
>(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/national/17PRIE.html):
>"As Scandal Keeps Growing, Church and Its Faithful Reel
>By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and ALESSANDRA STANLEY
>....
>Across the country, in an effort to restore credibility, many dioceses are
>volunteering to turn over their records to prosecutors".
>
>>From my print edition:
>"Across the country, in an effort to restore credibility, many dioceses
>after another is volunteering to turn over their records to prosecutors".
>
>Pity the subbie didn't catch this grammatical goofup before it made the
>print version ;-)
>Jimmy

   The slip-up in "many dioceses after another" is a clear example of
a syntactic blend: "many dioceses" + "one diocese after another."
Such errors are frequent in everyday speech, and FWIW I published a
list of those I had been jotting down for 10-15 years: Gerald Leonard
Cohen: _Syntactic Blends In English Parole_, Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang. 1987. "Parole" in the title is intended as the eminent linguist
Saussure used it: anything not in the standard language. I used it
particularly for slips of the tongue.
    Most of my examples are from educated people: professors, broadcasters, etc.

--Gerald Cohen