to early/absentee vote

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

 From Language Log reader Drew Ward to me a few days ago:

  This month I have been hearing formations such as “John early voted
today.” (local news) or “Many more people this year have decided to
early vote.” (CNN)

Today I also heard this trend being applied to absentee voting with a
local news station following up a story on early voting with “You can
also absentee vote this week.”  Whereas in the past I know I’ve always
heard “vote absentee” or “vote by absentee ballot”.
.....

lots of google hits for "to early vote" and "early voted", a few for
"to absentee vote" and "absentee voted".

Thousands line up to early vote. Submitted by ryanteaguebeckwith on
October 17, 2008
projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/thousands_line_up_to_early_vote

Some people in Clayton County are standing in line for four hours just
to early-vote."
www.mcclatchydc.com/254/story/54982.html

Oct 28, 2008 ... We early voted friday.. whew… I was relieved.. and
felt proud as well for my vote choice…
newscoma.com/2008/10/28/early-voted/

I Early Voted for Barack Today! by Arkieboy. Mon Oct 27, 2008 at
01:11:38 PM PDT . My wife kicked me out of the house today. Told me to
go hang out in the ...
www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/27/154842/05

Sep 25, 2008 ... "This will be my third year to absentee vote,"
Gnidovec said.
www.dailyvidette.com/news/2008/09/25/News/
Absentee.Voting.Eases.Process .For.Students-3450749.shtml

How to absentee vote in Louisiana. Posted Sep 7th 2007 10:00AM by Mike
Schleifstein
www.bloggingneworleans.com/2007/09/07/how-to-absentee-vote-in-
louisiana/

Nov 1, 2008 ... If you have absentee voted already stop in and say hi.
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4350333

Oct 29, 2008 ... Have you either early voted or absentee voted in the
2008 Election? Yes. No. Other (Tell us below!)
www.wowowow.com/poll/have-you-either-early-voted-or-absentee-voted-2008-election-131063
.....

these formations look to me not like an unusual placement of the
modifiers "early" and "absentee", but rather like back-formations from
"early/absentee voting/voter".  the result seems to function as a
lexical unit (note the hyphenated "early-vote" example).

for "early vote", there's a clear advantage to having such a unit,
since "vote early" could refer to voting early on election day, while
"early vote" refers specifically to institutionalized procedures for
voting before election day.

(i posted on Language Log a little while ago about a somewhat
different back-formation:

   AZ, 8/22/08: To gay marry:
  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=519

with the verb back-formed from "gay marriage".)

arnold

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