Missing PREP differing by dialect

[Wilson Gray]

Thanks, arnold! I'm glad that it's not just me. Apparently, not even
the author himself coulld decide what that title was supposed to mean!

FWIW, I'm beginning to have a little more respect for the Wikipedia.
When I originally tried to use it, I wanted to see whether there was
any new material in a field in which I am, well, learned, and found
mistakes as gross as spelling "Chomsky" as "Chlumsky." But I guess
that "that's [merely] the shit you got to watch," to quote the set-up
to the punch line of an old joke.

-Wilson


On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 11:05 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>  Subject:      Re: Missing PREP differing by dialect
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  On Apr 3, 2008, at 7:50 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>  > "A Clockwork Orange"
>  >
>  > BTW, is there anyone willing to explain the meaning of this title or
>  > to deconstruct it in some way? Is it an orange composed of clockwork?
>  > Or clockwork that's orange in color? Has it a point? Or WTF?
>
>  from the Wikipedia page, the somewhat unsatisfying:
>
>  Explanation of the novel's title
>
>  Anthony Burgess wrote that the title was a reference to an alleged old
>  Cockney expression "as queer as aclockwork orange".¹ Due to his time
>  serving in the British Colonial Office in Malaysia, Burgess thought
>  that the phrase could be used punningly to refer to a mechanically
>  responsive (clockwork) human (orang, Malay for "man").
>
>  Burgess wrote in his later (Nov. 1986) introduction, titled A
>  Clockwork Orange Resucked, that a creature who can only perform good
>  or evil is "a clockwork orange — meaning that he has the appearance of
>  an organism lovely with color and juice, but is in fact only a
>  clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil; or the almighty
>  state."
>
>  In his essay "Clockwork Oranges"², Burgess asserts that "this title
>  would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian,
>  or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of
>  colour and sweetness". This title alludes to the protagonist's
>  positively conditioned responses to feelings of evil which prevent the
>  exercise of his free will.
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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