misnomer 'misconception'

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 01:34 PM 10/26/2004, you wrote:
>On Oct 24, 2004, at 11:53 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>
>>On Oct 21, 2004, at 5:29 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
>>>Fritz, you speak the tired language of yesterday. Nowadays you'd get
>>>the salad.  See, "substitute" means "replace."  "Can I substitute the
>>>fries?" "Of course. Would you care for a salad?  Or baked sweet
>>>potato?"
>>
>>i'm not doubting you, but i'd like some cites.  this is a still further
>>extension of "substitute" into the realm of "replace" from the
>>developments i just described.  this is the verb with a plain direct
>>object.
>
>one of the lessons here is that it's not enough to search out examples
>of a word with some meaning ("substitute" 'replace'); we have to look
>at the contexts in which it occurs.  i've now gone back to denison's
>manuscript, and see that things are even more complex than i made out.
>
>to recap a bit, in slightly different form.  using denison's (hopefully
>transparent) labels OLD and NEW, the original verb usages were:
>   (1) substitute NEW for OLD  (NEW be substituted for OLD)
>   (2) replace OLD by/with NEW  (OLD be replaced by/with NEW)
>
>"substitute" then encroaches on "replace" territory, giving the
>proscribed (but very widespread and unambiguous):
>   (3) substitute OLD by/with NEW  (OLD be substituted by/with NEW)
>
>now, the oblique objects in all of these cases are omissible, with the
>result that clause types (1) and (3) collapse; potential ambiguity
>results:
>   (1') substitute NEW  (NEW be substituted)
>   (3') substitute OLD  (OLD be substituted)
>this is the development jon lighter alludes to, and i asked for cites
>to, above.  (3') is a kind of reversal of simple transitive
>"substitute" in (1').
>
>the construction denison is particularly interested in is (4), a blend
>of (1) (original "substitute") and (3) (encroached "substitute"), and a
>source of potential ambiguity with respect to (1):
>   (4) substitute OLD for NEW  (OLD be substituted for NEW)
>this denision calls "reversed "substitute" ".  he believes it to have
>appeared recently -- his first cites are from the BNC (1985-93) -- and
>in british english, and still to be almost entirely british rather than
>american.  he suggests that the usage arose in soccer contexts, and
>then spread (far and fast).  here's a nice cite he sent me yesterday:
>-----
>I meant to give you this one.  Helen Young, national weather forecast,
>6.06 am, BBC Radio 4, 21 October 2004:
>
>Well, we can substitute rain for wind today:  it's going to be a very
>windy day.  Blowing a gale is no exaggeration.
>
>[and yes, it had been very wet the day before]
>-----
>
>this picture would be significantly deranged if there are respectable
>numbers of reversed "substitute" -- note, *reversed* "substitute", not
>just any occurrence of "substitute" meaning 'replace'; the oblique
>object with "for" is crucial -- back some years in american english.  i
>have to confess that i didn't record the details of my students' use of
>"substitute" to mean 'replace', so i can't swear that some (or any, or
>many) of them were reversed "substitute".
>
>can any of you provide some relevant data?
>
>denison reports some difficulty in making his manuscript available
>on-line, but says: "I'd be happy to forward it to anyone interested who
>can't get it themself" (yes, "themself", a little gift to me as the
>former adviser of the "themself" maven).  his website is
>   http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/info/staff/dd/
>(and i'm copying this posting to him).
>
>as someone with a lot of handedness trouble, i'm praying that i've
>gotten OLD and NEW distributed correctly in the discussion abo\ve.
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

Number 4 above is in fact what I've been getting for some time from
nonnative writers of English (1/3-1/2 of our grad class), and I always have
to dig back through the context to figure out what's old and what's
new.  The British English usage may explain some of this, since many of our
NN grads have had British-based English instruction.  But Americans tend to
use number 3, and I DO find it ambiguous, esp. with "by."  But I'll have to
collect samples, I agree.