stunning antedating

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 20, 2006, at 6:38 AM, David Bowie wrote:

> From:    "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>
>> most people, encountering examples like this, treat them like speech
>> errors, either unconsciously "correcting" them or noting their
>> oddness consciously (and classifying them as some sort of "failure of
>> parallelism").  but a minority (maybe as many as 20%) have no trouble
>> with them, even after reflection; yes, they're not formally parallel,
>> but for us GoToGo types, that's ok.
>
> Most people reject GoToGo constructions out of hand?!?

if they notice them, yes.  most of the time, of course, these people
don't notice them, but just silently (and unconsciously) "fix" them.

because of this, and because of the fact that occurrences of the
construction are rare even for the minority of speakers who have it,
GoToGo hasn't yet been inveighed against by prescriptivists.  it's
under their radar.

i have occasional moments of anxiety that my writing about under-the-
radar constructions will set off a wave of opprobium from the advice
givers.

> I'm going to lie on the floor, curl up in a fetal position, and
> suck on
> my thumb until the world stops spinning around my ears.

nonsense!  stand up and be proud of your grammar!  join me and ivan
sag, talkin' proud against the intolerant majority, like the well-
known syntactician who, when confronted with GoToGo examples from
ivan and me, asked in a pointed way, "Is that even English?"  (my own
daughter had a similar reaction.  she broke out in asterisks, as we
say in my household.  oh, sharper than a serpent's tooth!)

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org