the spread of adjective-licensed "of"

[Wilson Gray]

But have you ever had the unfortunate feeling that this criticism was
"spot on,' to coin a phrase?

-Wilson

On 1/23/08, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: the spread of adjective-licensed "of"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "...people saying ... that my work was merely descriptive and
> therefore of no significance."
>
> Arnold, I know the feeling.
>
>   JL
>
> "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> Subject: Re: the spread of adjective-licensed "of"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jan 22, 2008, at 5:08 PM, James Harbeck wrote:
>
> > I've just come upon a brief analysis of this structure in English and
> > other Germanic languages at
> > http://web.uconn.edu/wurmbrand/CGSW/Lilley.pdf
>
> just to point out that this is a topic we pick up about once a year,
> back for some years, always starting over as if no one had ever
> thought or written about it before.
>
> most recently in 9-10 june 2007, starting with a query from joe
> salmons, with a fairly long response from me about some of the
> literature and about variability in judgments on the variants, and
> then further discussion.
>
> i have no interest in rehashing any of this, possibly ever anywhere,
> but certainly not on ADS-L.
>
> as a further twist, my 1995 paper on the subject (available on my
> website) elicited a certain amount of correspondence from people
> saying (a) that my modest couching of the description in terms of
> constructions made the paper incomprehensible to theoretical
> syntacticians, or (b) that my work was merely descriptive and
> therefore of no significance.
>
> arnold, back into the shadows
>
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