substitution of X with Y

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Dec 10, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: substitution of X with Y
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ... Though I grew up with only "substitute X for Y," I knew that
> German
> and other languages had something like "substitute Y with X," which
> hung me up when I first came across it, since it required "reverse
> interpretation," so to speak. Then, I started to see something similar
> in English (in BrE first?), where, IMO at the time, it was an even
> worse problem, since it really interferes with my automatic
> understanding of English.

encroached "substitute" -- "substitute OLD with/by NEW" -- has been
around for quite some time, and i don't think it's particularly
british.  its virtue, as i explained in one of my old postings, is
that it puts OLD before NEW (yes, i know, "replace OLD with/by NEW"
also does this).  if you attend to the prepositions, the meanings are
clear.

a true reversal occurs in "substitute OLD for NEW" -- reversed
"substitute" -- which is both recently innovated and originally
british (though it's been spreading to the u.s.).  you'd think that
this usage would be drastically confusing, but in context the
intentions of the speaker or writer are almost always clear.  (in
fact, people detect occurrences of reversed "substitute" by divining
the intentions of the speaker or writer and then realizing that the
syntactic argumen'ts are, from their point of view, in the wrong order.)

arnold


>
>
> Now, having mastered my initially-negative emotional response - like,
> it's about *dialects*, whether academic or rural, no? - I was just
> kinda, sorta wondering how far people for whom this construction is
> natural are willing to take this "innovation."
>
> Though I meant no harm, I apologize. (This is as close as I can come
> to the hated, extremely-peeving, "*if* I've done anything that someone
> may have been injured by," etc. That's *so* bleeping weasling! It's
> makes it seem as though the problem is the injured party's fault for
> being overly sensitive, even unmanly and not able to take it. Either
> apologize for real or tell them to get stuffed.)
>
> -Wilson
> –––
> 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.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Arnold Zwicky
> <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: substitution of X with Y
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Dec 10, 2008, at 7:08 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      substitution of X with Y
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> "... substitution of 'call in sick' with 'call in gay' ..."
>>>
>>> I don't know that I've ever seen this construction before. Would
>>> "...
>>> substitution of 'call in sick' _by_ 'call in gay' ..." also be
>>> grammatical? How about "... substitution of 'call in gay' for
>>> 'call in
>>> sick' ..."?
>>
>> we've discussed these uses of "substitute" (plus another, labeled
>> "reversed substitute") many times here on ADS-L.  from a posting of
>> mine from 10/26/04:
>>
>> using [david] denison's (hopefully transparent) labels OLD and NEW,
>> the original verb usages were:
>>  (1) substitute NEW for OLD  (NEW be substituted for OLD)
>>  (2) replace OLD by/with NEW  (OLD be replaced by/with NEW)
>>
>> "substitute" then encroaches on "replace" territory, giving the
>> proscribed (but very widespread and unambiguous):
>>  (3) substitute OLD by/with NEW  (OLD be substituted by/with NEW)
>>
>> ----
>>
>> as i pointed out several times in these discussions, MWDEU has a nice
>> discussion of "encroached substitute" as in (3).
>>
>> encroached "substitute" is now so frequent, including in material
>> from
>> "good writers" in serious contexts, that i'm not sure it can fairly
>> be
>> labeled as non-standard.
>>
>> to be fair to wilson, as far as i can tell he wasn't a participant in
>> these years of discussion of encroached and reversed "substitute" on
>> ADS-L.  he might simply have skipped over these threads as not being
>> of interest.
>>
>> arnold
>>
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