X to Y: Recency illusion?

[Erik Hoover]

Betcha beans to bacon there are multiple factors going on here.


On Apr 28, 2008, at 1:26 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: X to Y: Recency illusion?
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> On Apr 27, 2008, at 8:23 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
>> For a few years, I've been noticing the omission of the preposition
>> 'from'
>> in phrases like these:
>>
>>   Buddha to Buffy...
>
>> One guess I have is that this is a generalization
>> from clipped "from X to Y" PPs in compounds like "cradle-to-grave
>> insurance"
>> or "head-to-toe coverage" or "wall-to-wall carpet".
>
> it could just be omission of material that's predictable in context.
>
>>
>> What prompted me to ask about this today was something in today's
>> newspaper:
>>
>>   "Tweens to teenagers are going to hear their parents say 'no' for
>> the
>> first time,"...
>
>> I believe that's the first time I've seen the "X to Y" construction
>> used as
>> something other than a PP.
>
> it is true that PPs can serve as subjects as well as adverbials --
>    From 10 to 2 is the busiest time of the day.
>    From 10 to 13 is a difficult age.
>      (cf. Under the rug is a bad place to hide a gun.)
>
> and as postnominal modifiers --
>    The hours from 10 to 2 are the busiest of the day.
>    Children from 10 to 13 are often difficult.
>      (cf. The gun under the rug was obvious.)
>
> and "from X to Y" has the variant "X to Y" in these uses --
>    10 to 2 is the busiest time of the day.
>    10 to 13 is a difficult age.
>    The hours 10 to 2 are the busiest of the day.
>    Children 10 to 13 are often difficult.
>
>> Here, not only do I have to add in a 'from'; I
>> also have to add in an 'Everyone'. to make it a full NP.
>
> try "kids" or something of the sort; then there's no problem with
> number agreement.
>
>> ... At this point I have to conclude that "X to Y" is going or has
>> gone beyond a
>> mere clipping and is becoming something else.
>
> clippings often develop a characteristic syntax of their own, not
> identical to their full alternatives; they become new constructions.
> so nouns with clipped articles ("time was", "thing is") don't have
> quite the same syntax as their arthrous counterparts ("the time was",
> "the thing is"):
>    The thing is that we have to go.
>    The thing is, we have to go.
>    *Thing is that we have to go.
>    Thing is, we have to go.
> (these clippings are not just casual-speech phenomena.  i have a pile
> of examples from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the
> like, and not just in quoted speech.)
>
>> You can see above that 1999 is my earliest dating for it, but I
>> wonder how
>> long it's really been out there. It's hard to search for, since the
>> only
>> word that remains constant is the 'to', and I don't know what
>> keywords would
>> find me any scholarly research on this.
>
> the category in my example files is Truncation, but that's not widely
> used by linguists (and is used for plenty of other things).
> "clipping" is usually used for clipped variants of words ("cig" or
> "ret(te)" for "cigarette"), so searching on that will get you lots of
> irrelevant stuff.
>
>> Do any of you have antedatings or
>> references?
>
> alas no, but now i've made a XtoY file.  i probably just didn't notice
> the phenomenon.
>
> arnold
>
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