dookie

[Barnhart]

Is this the same as "have a think" (the British informal expression) for
"to think"?

Regards,
David K. Barnhart, Editor/Publisher
The Barnhart DICTIONARY COMPANION
Lexik at highlands.com

American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on Friday, September 24,
2004 at 2:11 PM -0500 wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: dookie
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Sep 23, 2004, at 5:24 PM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
>>> ... but part of a
>>> "light verb" construction.
>>
>> Oops.  I realize I should have defined this term of art.  The point
>> is that "to take a piss/shit/shower" is essentially just a different
>> way of saying "to piss/shit/shower"; the verb "take" doesn't
>> contribute compositionally to the meaning, and the nouns are, as I
>> was trying to argue in the last message, essentially place-holders,
>> not real, honest-to-goodness God-fearing referential nominal
>> expressions, which is why relative clauses are ruled more or less
>> out.  Haj Ross talked about these in his dissertation under the
>> rubric of "modalization", which I recall was a term he borrowed from
>> Zelllig Harris, and I'm sure Jespersen had a detailed discussion of
>> them somewhere too.
>
>"aspectualization" might have been a better term, since the light verbs
>function to shift the Aktionsart of the verb.  they're somewhat like
>the aspectual prefixes of slavic languages.  (and everyone says how
>easy english is!)
>
>i have the same faith in jespersen, but don't find it in a quick search
>through MEG.
>
>arnold