typos

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Feb 15 21:17:26 UTC 2008


At 7:43 PM +0000 2/15/08, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>I'm especially interested in these errors that come about when the
>two options are not semantically very distinct (but similar in
>form). There were two restaurants in Durham, NC, named "Fowlers" and
>"Fosters." People misspoke, miswrote, and misremembered them. But no
>one ever confused them with "Fudrucker's" (one more syllable, but
>semantically more distinct), and I suspect that a "Farmers"
>restaurant (or a "Faggers" would not have been confused, either.

...although Dick Armey, no doubt in town to visit Jesse Helms, might
have confused the latter establishment with "Frank's Diner".  Or
"Barney's Men's Store".

LH

>------Original Message------
>From: Arnold M. Zwicky
>Sender: ADS-L
>To: ADS-L
>ReplyTo: ADS-L
>Sent: Feb 15, 2008 12:54 PM
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] typos
>
>On Feb 15, 2008, at 9:10 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>
>>  On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 9:15 AM, David Bowie <db.list at pmpkn.net>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>  Speaking of completion errors: I'm teaching a course (History of the
>>>  English Language) fully online this semester, which of course
>>>  involves a
>>>  lot of typing. I have discovered that it's nearly impossible for me
>>>  to
>>>  write the word "linguists" without first typing "linguistics" and
>>>  then
>>>  deleting the interposing "ic".
>>>
>>>  I'm just curious whether other linguists have the same problem (or
>>>  similar ones) typing stuff that should be automatic for them, given
>>>  the
>>>  frequency of the terms they regularly get wrong.
>>>
>>
>>  This one does!
>
>oh my, all the time.
>
>i guess i should start collecting my completion errors -- for my
>speech errors course next quarter.
>
>arnold
>
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>
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