Having cake . . .

[Laurence Horn]

>On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:48 AM, Charlie Doyle wrote:
>
>>This morning's campus newspaper has a filler item from AP:
>>Residents of a "senior center" in New York State are protesting a
>>recent ban on doughnuts at the facility. In the accompanying
>>picture, beside a demonstrater holding a neatly-printed sign that
>>reads "We're Old Enough to Choose" stands another with a sign
>>inscribed "We Want our Cake and Eat It Too!!" Interesting grammar.
>
>maybe a telescoping of "want to have our cake and eat it too".
>perhaps distantly related to GoToGo ("I'm going right out and buy
>myself a new stepladder" -- Jimmy Stewart's character in Vertigo).
>classic GoToGo has the motion verb GO in the present participle, with
>a direction adverbial, but there are innovative variants with other
>motion verbs and variants without the adverbial.  and then Laura
>Staum reported the following on 9/14:
>
>This was so good I almost wasn't sure it was one. Comes from a flyer
>that a local realtor left on our doorstep:
>
>If you are interested in buying or selling and save lots of money...
>I'd love the opportunity to make your dreams come true!
>
>AMZ reply 9/15:
>
>wow.  *way* far off  the canonical examples.  "V-ing and V-base",
>with the first verb not a verb of motion and with the V-ing nominal
>rather than verbal (progressive).
>
>  ----
>
>Joel Wallenberg once suggested there might be a tendency towards
>using V-base in second conjuncts -- sort of V-base as a conjunctive
>verb form.  there are parallels in many languages.
>
Including the classic example of non-connectivity in VP-fronting, as
in "He said he would eat the cake, and eat the cake he has" (where
"...and eaten the cake he has" is downright weird).  Not quite the
same phenomenon, but related.

LH

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