Peasant?

[Wilson Gray]

Not to mention Westwood Village, CA, the seat of a branch of the
University of California. ;-)

-Wilson

On 4/10/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> 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: Peasant?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Apr 10, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Michael McKernan wrote:
>
> > Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> > ...
> >> i looked up Perry because i have a friend who lives on a farm outside
> >> it and owns a bookstore in town (as they say).   she does talk about
> >> going "(in)to town" or "to the village", but when asked where her
> >> bookstore is, she tells people it's "in a little town south of
> >> Rochester", not "in a little village".
> >
> > I beg to differ.  People in Vermont, and I suppose elsewhere,
> > regularly use
> > the term 'village.'  It means a (relatively small) population
> > center, or
> > developed area.  Here, 'town' is a geo-political area, sometimes as
> > large
> > as 80 square miles or so, incorporated with a charter from the
> > State of
> > Vermont.  While people do also say things like 'I'm going to
> > town...', they
> > are just as likely to say 'I'm going down to the village...' where
> > there
> > might be a few stores, a post office, a school.
>
> yes.  notice that i reported this usage -- "to the village" -- from
> my friend in Perry (and i myself used "to the village" in referring
> to trips to the central area of Amherst, Mass., when i lived in the
> area).  and there are "village greens" in lots of places (including
> Worthington, Ohio, not far from where i lived in Columbus).  what's
> at issue is characterizing a locality as "a village" (outside of
> discussions of jurisdictional labels), as in "Kim grew up in a
> village in Vermont".  this is what struck Bolinger as odd, and still
> strikes Larry Horn and me as odd.
>
> but there may well be regional variation, in this as in so many other
> things, as McKernan reports here:
>
> > ... Contrary to Arnold's assertion, ordinary people here in Vermont
> > quite often say they live 'in a village' (particulary when it's
> > true!) or that they live near a village, etc.
> >
>
> what gave me pause about this was the parenthetical "particularly
> when it's true!", which looks to me like a reference to the
> administrative label, not to the ordinary-language "village" 'small
> group of dwellings in a rural area'.
>
> arnold
>
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