dookie

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:41 PM -0400 9/24/04, Barnhart wrote:
>Is this the same as "have a think" (the British informal expression) for
>"to think"?

I would (have a) think so.  Cf. "have a look", "have a sniff", "have
a taste", etc., as well as "have the hope that".  Ross (1967) points
out that these don't yield the same sort of (Ross-)constraint
violations as ordinary complex NPs:

(?)Who did you have the hope that you daughter would marry?
*Who did you dismiss [the hope that you daughter would marry ___]?

(?)What did you make the claim we should do in Iraq?
*What did you believe [the claim we should do ___ in Iraq]?

larry

>
>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