"substitute with" again

Tue Mar 7 22:33:17 UTC 2006

On Mar 7, 2006, at 2:20 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> I get it all the time in student papers.  At first I thought it was
> just a
> non-native speaker/writer error, but I think it's becoming
> general.  (We
> talked about this a year or so ago, right?)

yes, i've posted on it several times.  there are three usages:

   substitute NEW for OLD: the original

   substitute OLD with/by NEW: innovative, but attested since the
17th century, and reasonably common (from native speakers) for a
hundred years; has an entry in MWDEU

   substitute OLD for NEW: "reversed" (in david denison's
terminology), attested only pretty recently, and originally
(apparently) in british english, though now slowly spreading to
american english

larry's example was of the second, and less startling, sort.

arnold

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