Fw: Syntactic blends

[John Fitzpatrick]

>>Would "den up" be a syntactic blend, from "den" + perhaps "build up"?

"Up" seems to me to more of an intensifier, as in "revv up" and "wash up".  If you must find syntactic blending, my candidate would be "hole up", which is a synonym for "den up" but has a different meaning from simple "hole".

Is syntactic blending something speakers actually do [how would you test it?] or just a name for a wide-spread pattern? 


Seán Fitzpatrick
The ends had better justify the means.

----- Original Message ----- 

From: James A. Landau 
Sent: Monday, 06 October, 2003 08:10
Subject: Re: Syntactic blends


A couple of days ago there was a newspaper story (unfortunately I did not
keep it) about a bear that had been raiding David Letterman's country home.  The
bear was caught and transported a considerable distance in hopes that it would
"den up" and not return to David Letterman's neighborhood.

Would "den up" be a syntactic blend, from "den" + perhaps "build up"?

       - James A. Landau