dookie

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:04 PM -0500 9/23/04, Mullins, Bill wrote:
>  > -----Original Message-----
>>  From: Arnold M. Zwicky [mailto:zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU]
>>  Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 1:45 PM
>>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>  Subject: Re: dookie
>>
>>    but HDAS glosses it as
>  > 'excrement', which suggests a mass use (like the most common
>>  uses of "shit") as well.  is this possible? things like,
>>  "gross, there's dookie all over the floor"?
>
>"Shit" can be a count noun, too.  "Take a shit" for example.
>(although "leave a shit" would, strictly speaking, be more accurate)

As your last observation indicates, _shit_ isn't *really* a count
noun in _take a shit_, or a referential noun at all, but part of a
"light verb" construction.  Compare _take a shower_, where "the
shower" is part of the event, not an entity.   Note that (if you
share my judgments) no relativization on these non-referential
nominals is possible:

The shit that the cat left on the floor got on my shoes.
??The shit that you took got stuck in the toilet.

but OK:
Did the shit that you took make you feel better?

--where the event, rather than the product, is referenced.  My
judgments, anyway--YMMV.

larry