phrases whose literal meaning...

[Dennis R. Preston]

It was an expression I used as early as 1948. Glad to see some good
uses hang in there.

dInIs

An expression I hear students use is "Can I see your pencil?" ,
meaning "Can I use your pencil?"


--- Mark A Mandel <mam at THEWORLD.COM> wrote:
>  On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, James A. Landau wrote:
>
>  #My daughter needs to know the term to be applied to phrases whose
>  literal
>  #meaning is one thing but which are universally interpreted as
>  something else.
>  # Her examples are "How do you do?" which literally asks "How are
>  you?" but is
>  #used merely as "Hello"; and one from Hebrew, "mazel tov" which
>  literally
>  #means "good luck" but is universally used as "congratulations".
>
>  Actually each of these is one remove further from literality. "How
>  do
>  you do?", taken literally, is the same construction as "How do you
>  sew?"
>  or "How do you S?", and is almost ungrammatical, since "do" as main
>  verb
>  with no explicit object is almost obsolete. It's a frozen form,
>  supplanted in current syntax by "How are you doing?" And "mazel
>  tov" is
>  literally 'a good star', which by an astrological metaphor means
>  'good
>  luck'.
>
>  -- Mark A. Mandel


=====
Margaret G. Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor - English and Linguistics
  & University Editor
Department of English
Hampton University, Hampton, VA 23668
(757)727-5769(voice);(757)727-5084(fax);(757)851-5773(home)
e-mail: margaret.lee at hamptonu.edu   or   mlee303 at yahoo.com

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--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 353-9290