Loose talk

[Wilson Gray]

It reminds me of the time that a bunch of us were discussing the old -
well, back then, they were the new - Chomskyan syntactic-movement
rules, specifically, so-called "Yiddish Movement," when one of the
participants, an Italian-American, remarked, "Well, 'Yiddish Movement'
I *never* use." Needless to say, the sentence, "Yiddish Movement I
never use," is itself a stunningly-obvious example of Yiddish Movement.

-Wilson

On Jul 14, 2005, at 5:07 PM, sagehen wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Loose talk
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> "Borrow" for "lend" is very common here in ND.  My students say it all
> the  time; recently, a student form my linguistics course asked a
> fellow
> teacher, "Can you borrow (lend) me a pencil?"  She was immediately
> startled because she hadn't even realized she used that expression
> though we'd talked about it in class.
>
> Patti Kurtz
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
> I haven't heard this for a good many years, but it was fairly common in
> Nebraska when I was a kid (30s, 40s).
> A. Murie
>