Who is Rosetta Stone?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Jan 23 20:17:45 UTC 2006


>On Jan 23, 2006, at 10:12 AM, Larry Horn asks:
>
>>OK, but is it "the RoSETta Stone" or "the Rosetta STONE"?
>
>for me, clearly the former.  it's like "the BRILL Building" (not "the
>Brill BUILDing").
>
>as far as i know, the arthrous/anarthrous (i *so* rarely get to use
>those wonderful terms) choice is pretty much independent of the
>forestress/afterstress choice.
>
Indeed, "Building", as in "the BRILL Building" or "the Empire STATE
Building", definitely retracts stress, the way "Street" but not
"Avenue" does.  Again, this is (for me) because Street is the
unmarked member of its category while Avenue/Road/Way/... are not.
Compare, on the other hand, the Giza PYRamid (not the GIZA Pyramid).
And as noted, "Stone" and "Rock" simply aren't unmarked enough to
yield this retraction.  The Elgin MARbles works that way for me too,
but YMMV.

Larry

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