Can a have an A, men?

[M Covarrubias]

On Feb 5, 2009, at 8:38 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 4:22 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Jocelyn Limpert
>> <jocelyn.limpert at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The "problem," as I clearly heard it, was always related to the
>>> pause,
>>> something that people often do, shifting their speech after a pause
>>> from one
>>> thought to another -- as in following a singular verb and a pause
>>> with a
>>> plural direct object.
>>
>> Following a singular verb with a plural direct object is bad?  'Cause
>> I do it all the time, with or without a pause.
>>
>> Isn't there a name for this?  -- A fault in the fault-finding that's
>> bigger than the original fault?  One of those Murphy's Law spinoffs?
>
> it's cousin to Muphry's Law and to Hartman's-McKean's-Skitt's Law, but
> these usually apply to formal faults within criticisms.  it's closer
> to incorrection/miscorrection, where something that's not an error is
> "corrected" to something else, often (but not necessarily) with a
> justifying "rule" to back up the alteration.
>
> maybe Jocelyn Limpert could give us some examples of what she sees as
> problematic.  at the moment i'm baffled.
>
> arnold

the singular verb/ plural direct object is just a poorly conceived and
chosen example.

but i think the quotes around "problem" are telling. as i understand
the comment, jocelyn is focusing on the possibility that obama's 'a'
before a vowel comes from a planning error rather than from a
grammatical feature of his dialect in which 'a' precedes both initial
V and initial C .

if it is a planning error then it's a "problem" only in the sense that
it doesn't represent the normal system of speech, and is in fact ...
an error.

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