Who's diddling and how?

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:41 AM -0400 7/14/08, Charles Doyle wrote:
>I can well remember a time--in my callow late youth, in a way more
>benighted time--when it sounded odd to me (even downright
>ungrammatical) if I heard "She fucked him" instead of the more
>normal (perhaps divinely ordained) "He fucked her."

At least two much cited papers made that claim, complete with asterisk on
*Jane fucked John:

Baker, Robert.  1975.  "Pricks" and "Chicks": A Plea for "Persons".
Reprinted in various anthologies, the last being Mary
Vetterling-Braggin (ed.), _Sexist Language: A Modern Philosophical
Analysis_.

Quang Phuc Dong (= a.k.a. James D. McCawley). 1971.  English
sentences without overt grammatical subject. Reprinted in A. M.
Zwicky et al. (eds.), _Studies Out in Left Field: Defamatory Essays
Presented to James D. McCawley.  Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc.

When I present those judgments in class and support them as reliable
for the time of publication of these papers (although I would used #
rather than *, since the anomaly was clearly pragmatic), I get
condescending smiles from students in reference to the benighted and
cramped understanding of their elders.

LH

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