Prescriptive Linguists

[Michael H Covarrubias]

Quoting ronbutters:

> My Spanish is a bit weak, but shouldn't that be, 'El que te vio las manos"?
>
> Doesn't "El que le vio las
> manos" mean '... looked at his hands'?
>
> Just wondering.
>


My fault for using the 'usted' form.

Had my father uttered the sentence in Spanish I'm pretty sure he would have felt
comfortable enough with my mother to use the 'tu' form. She let's him believe
that they're peers.

michael


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laurence Horn
>
> Date:         Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:48:25
> To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Prescriptive Linguists
>
>
> At 12:18 PM -0500 1/29/08, Michael H Covarrubias wrote:
> >Just this last weekend I overheard my father and mother (both L1 Spanish
> >speakers but fluent in English) discussing a certain doctor. My mother
> didn't
> >know which doctor my father was talking about. He said to her "He's
> >the one that
> >saw you your hands."
> >
> >My English ears didn't like it but of course in Spanish 'El que le vio las
> >manos" and it makes perfect sense.
> >
> >And it's sounding better and better to my English ears now.
> >
> >Michael
>
> Seems like a compromise (a.k.a. Spanglish), since the literal would
> be more like "He's the one that saw you the hands."  But the result
> in either case, as with the Kentuckian/Texan sentence involviing Mary
> below, is to extend the realm of non-argument datives in English, as
> earlier espied in the threads relating to the personal dative ("You
> need you a new muffler", "My husband loved him some Jack Daniels"),
> as heard in Kentucky, Texas, and elsewhere.
>
> LH
>
> >
> >Quoting William Salmon:
> >>
> >>  QSubject: Re: Prescriptive linguists
> >>  >>
> >>  >> *Which car did you put Mary in the garage?
> >>  >>
> >>  >> So this is supposed to mean "Which car did you put in the garage for
> Mary
> >>  >> (or at Mary's behest/request)?"?
> >>  >> DAD
> >>
> >>  The starred sentence is fine for me, a native speaker of Texan English.
> >>  I remember a syntax class, though, where my judgments on these kinds of
> >>  sentences were met with such disbelief that I felt like I had insulted
> >>  the instructor, who incidentally was a non-native speaker of English. I
> >>  didn't press the issue after that. :-)
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  > Yes, that was his interpretation.
> >>  > The fun part was, that no one else in the class was a native
> >>  > speaker--they were all international students.  I'm Jewish of the
> usual
> >>  > Ashkenazic background, which he knew, and he took my rejection of the
> >>  > sentence as further evidence that Chomsky and I ;-) were not native
> >>  > speakers, having grown up solely around immigrants, and thus not
> exposed
> >>  > to the full 'RANGE' of American dialects.
> >>  >
> >>  > Geoff
> >>  >
> >>  >
> >>  > I am, among other things, a translator (Portuguese, Spanish, French,
> >>  English
> >>  > in various combinations) and it seems the non-native speaker syndrome
> is
> >>  > common to both the translation and linguistics games. That is, there
> are
> >>  > non-native speakers who believe the best defense is a good offense,
> and
> >>  they
> >>  > come up with all sorts of convoluted reasons why it is actually better
> to
> >>  be
> >>  > a non-native than a native speaker when studying/translating a
> language.
> >>  Of
> >>  > course, given reasonably equal levels of education, experience,
> smarts,
> >>  > etc., they are wrong. I direct anyone who feels differently to
> >>  > www.engrish.com. "I put Mary the car in the garage" would fit right in
> at
> >>  > that site.
> >>  > DAD
> >>  >
> >>  >
> >>  >
> >>  >
> >>  > --
> >>  > Geoffrey S. Nathan
> >>  >
> >
> >
> >
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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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