The Korean(-American) passive "himself"?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Apr 23 16:22:21 UTC 2007


At 9:09 AM -0700 4/23/07, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Apr 20, 2007, at 10:08 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>
>>I think the overriding concern here is the right to be presumed
>>innocent
>>until found guilty in court in the US. If the reporter said that
>>Cho did
>>it, then there might even be a case of libel or bad reporting at
>>the least.
>
>but in this case (and many similar ones, like the Columbine
>shootings), there can never be a court finding of guilt, because
>there can never be a trial.  when the identity of the perpetrator(s)
>is clear, no one ever has a problem with identifying them as such,
>even though they are (and forever will be) "innocent" in the legal
>sense.
>
>another case where legal language and ordinary language don't work
>quite the same.
>
And after all, we never refer to John Wilkes Booth as the alleged
killer of Lincoln (unless we're a revisionist historian).

LH

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