the preposition "bar"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:27 PM -0800 3/22/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>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"


Is this really extant in the U.S.?  I gather it's normal in the UK,
Australia, et al., but I've only ever heard "all over but the
shouting" in these parts.  Prepositional "bar" is pretty much
restricted in the varieties of English with which I'm intimate to the
"bar none" construction, although I'm unlikely to have hung out in
the appropriate circles to have been exposed to the horse-betting
slang.   I agree that "barring" would be unremarkable in all these
contexts, including that in the handout.

Larry

>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.
>