FW: poignant "Gen-X so" example

[vida morkunas]

very poignant indeed.

and, so sad.

Vida.
vidamorkunas at telus.net

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Laurence Horn
Sent: May 5, 2003 5:57 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: poignant "Gen-X so" example


(Actually, it's post-X in such contexts, but I don't know a more
inclusive name for the construction--"Gen X/Y/Z so?")  Note the
juxtaposed pre- and post-copular placements of the two "so"s.

larry
==========================
The New York Times
May 4, 2003, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

  SECTION: Section 9; Page 1; Column 1; Style Desk

  HEADLINE: One Verging on Stardom, One Left Back, With a Gun

  BYLINE:  By SHAILA K. DEWAN

  SHE was a Yale graduate with a plan for success, a budding actress
with charm and a checklist. Having landed a few small roles, an
American Express advertisement and an audition for "Sex and the
City," Lyric Benson, at 22, was on her way to what many assumed would
be fame.

  She left New Haven with her New York City agents already lined up.
Her fiance, Robert J. Ambrosino II, had moved their things to an
apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She got a job at Balthazar, a
nexus of SoHo glamour. She met actors and rockers, people with
pointy-toed shoes and chunky haircuts.

  And with her broadening perspective, she began to feel that her
relationship with Mr. Ambrosino, a decade older than she, was a
cocoon she was ready to leave. She was changing. Mr. Ambrosino, on
the waiting list to become a New York City firefighter, was already
pretty much who he was going to be.

  "She was so going places, and he so wasn't," said Kat Stoller, a
former housemate at Yale. That was a refrain among friends of the
couple last week as they sought to make sense of the stunningly
violent coda to a relationship that had already disintegrated. Ms.
Benson had broken off their engagement, but Mr. Ambrosino, 33, did
not want to let her go. He called her repeatedly and showed up at
Balthazar at closing time. And on April 24, he waited outside her
apartment for her to arrive home from work, shot and killed her, then
turned the gun on himself.
...