Fwd: sub.mot

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

a little on-line experiment, totally uncontrolled of course...

Begin forwarded message:

> From: zwicky at Turing.Stanford.EDU (Arnold Zwicky)
> Newsgroups: soc.motss
> Subject: substitution
> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:01:30 +0000 (UTC)
> Summary: vi vs. english grammar
>
> the story so far:  i posted the following...
>
>> a request (which i will explain soon): please tell me -- by e-mail
>> if at all possible -- how you would read this piece of code
>> ("s/while/after/") out *as a sentence of english*.
>
> the background: over on the American Dialect Society list, and in
> e-mail with a colleague at Manchester, i've been exploring the syntax
> of the verb "substitute" (and of its converse, "replace").
> simplifying some, there are three attested variants of "substitute":
>
> original "substitute":
>   substitute NEW for OLD  (1)
>   replace OLD with/by NEW
> there are still plenty of people who have only this system.
>
> encroached "substitute" (meaning 'replace' and taking over some of the
> syntax of "replace"):
>   substitute OLD with/by NEW (2)
> this use appears in the 17th century and has become very widespread,
> even in formal written english.  for some time now, Merriam-Webster
> dictionaries have treated it as standard (though many usage manuals
> label it as simply ungrammatical).  people who themselves use only
> original "substitute" tend to have problems with encroached
> "substitute", since it seems semantically backwards to them, but in
> fact the syntax provides an unambiguous cue to the meaning: with a
> second object in "for", it's NEW...OLD, but with a second object in
> "with/by", it's OLD...NEW.  you just have to learn to watch for those
> cues.
>
> but then, reversed "substitute" (meaning 'replace' but with the syntax
> of original "substitute" -- a kind of blend of (1) and (2)):
>   substitute OLD for NEW  (3)
> now there's unquestionably an ambiguity: (1) and (3) have the very
> same syntax, but converse meanings.  this use (which David Denison
> at Manchester has been studying) is recent (roughly 20 or so years
> old) and almost entirely british (though some american teachers of
> english as a second language report it in the writing of their
> students).  Denison suggests that it arose in the context of soccer,
> but by now it has spread very widely in the U.K.
>
> and then along came Our Ned with his vi instruction, and it occurred
> to me that i could use it to investigate english usage.  here's the
> deal: the instruction has three parts, an operator "s", to be read as
> an english verb, and two arguments "while" (which is OLD) and "after"
> (which is NEW), to be read as objects of the verb.  the operator "s"
> stands for either "substitute" or "search and replace" (a complexity i
> hadn't appreciated until i got mike jankulak's response).  if you try
> to minimize the distance between the vi expression and real english,
> then you'll choose the verb "substitute" (or "search and replace") and
> preserve the order of the arguments, treating "while" as the direct
> object of the verb and "after" as a second, prepositional, object.
> but you can't manage all of this if you have only original
> "substitute"; either you need the verb "replace", or you have to
> switch the objects, or you have to go for some more convoluted syntax.
> or, of course, use encroached or reversed "substitute".
>
> i didn't get any reversed "substitute", but i got pretty much
> everything else (in only seven responses), which was gratifying.
> (i also got a variety of helpful suggestions about vi and how to
> use it; i am, alas, a confirmed emacs person.)  here's the log...
>
> 1.  first in, jess anderson, with two alternatives:
>   1.1.  use "replace" instead of "substitute", but preserve argument
> order: replace "while with "after". ("by" would also be possible.)
>   1.2.  use "substitute" and preserve argument order, but with
> convoluted syntax: substitute for "while": "after".
>
> 2.  then chris waigl, who supplied more details about how "s" works
> than i really needed, but her response, stripped of these details,
> uses encroached "substitute": substitute "while" by "after".  ("with"
> would also be possible.)
>
> 3.  next, lee rudolph, with the "with" version of #2: substitute
> "while" with "after".
>
> 4.  on to ned deily himself, who provided two readings:
>   4.1.  the "by" version of 1.1: replace "while" by "after".
>   4.2.  a reversed-argument reading with "substitute":  substitute
> "after" for "while".
>
> 5.  only with lars ingebrigtsen did i start getting repeats (well, it
> was bound to happen).  lars suggested both 4.2 and 3.
>
> 6.  then came mike jankulak, with "search and replace", the two verbs
> distributed over the two objects (with order preserved): search for
> "while" and replace with "after".  ("by" would also be possible
> instead of "with".)
>
> 7.  and finally robert cumming, who offered 1.1 (and also a perverse
> reading, in which the vi instruction was just read as a sequence
> of symbol names).
>
> so, no reversed "substitute" -- substitute "while" for "after" -- but
> pretty much everything else.  thank you all.