the preposition "bar"

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Wed Mar 23 01:27:42 UTC 2005


from a handout at a stanford linguistics presentation 3/22/05:

... can therefore function as potential antecedents (bar other
mitigating conditions)...

-----

i would have written "barring".  outside of "bar none" and the
quotation "it was all over bar the shouting" and (i now see) "bar N"
(for some number N) 'except for N horses' in betting slang, this
preposition was, i had thought, no longer in use.  the most recent cite
in the OED Online is from 1870.  but here it is in the writing of a
young woman (a new zealander, for what that's worth).  and the
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language mentions it twice, without
comment, in lists of prepositions and exceptive expressions, suggesting
that huddleston and pullum (both speakers of british english) think it
has more general use.

this is the very devil to google for, needless to say.

has anyone been tracking this?

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)



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