beyond the pail

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:58 PM -0500 3/7/03, Duane Campbell wrote:
>On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 09:37:11 -0800 Anne Gilbert <avgilbert at PRODIGY.NET>
>writes:
>
>>  While "bucket" and "creek" are more usual(nowadays, at least), in My
>>  Fair
>>  State of Washington, I've actually *heard* "pail" and "crick" --
>
>I have been watching this thread with hope of enlightenment, in vain so
>far. Are you people saying that there is something non-standard about
>"pail"? I have always used "pail" and "bucket"  (PA and NY) as exact
>synonyms and never considered that there was anything regional about it.

Are you sure you use them as exact synonyms?  I have both words in my
active lexicon (NY), but if I'm going to build sand castles on the
beach (LI), I will bring my (plastic) pail (with or without shovel),
but not a bucket.  I think (although with less confidence) that
wooden ones are buckets rather than pails for me ("the old oaken
bucket" and all that), while metal ones can be either.  Of course,
this reflects the general tendency (cf. Breal, Bolinger, et al.) that
true synonymy tends to be minimized and that distinct words tend to
carve out distinct referential niches in a given dialect or idiolect,
even when these vary from speaker to speaker--remember our earlier
discussion of the cheap "vace" vs. the costly "vahz".  (And this
doesn't get into the question of why my grandfather kicked the bucket
without kicking the pail.)

Larry