Dorothy Parker and Vassar girls?

Fri Mar 6 16:48:30 UTC 2009

At 11:08 AM -0500 3/6/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>Since I attended Vassar for several years,* I was curious.  Did
>Parker actually say "Vassar girls"?  Wikipedia says Woolcott's
>biographical essay on Parker is the only source, and reports it as
>"If all the girls attending it ...", a Yale prom.
>
>Joel

Aha! You're more in the know than I am, and I probably just heard the
line in an apocryphal version, which is however well-known.  Googling
"Dorothy Parker" + "If all the girls at Vassar" pulls up 70 instances
of the aphorism, which in fact isn't *too* distant from Woolcott's
version, given the standard assumptions of the era about Yale, and
Vassar, and proms.  Then there are the hits presupposing it, such as
this one, which I find...well, I was going to say inscrutable, but I
won't go there:

http://www.musicmash.net/band/thomas-brinkmann/klick-revolution/
Apologies to Dorothy Parker (and Vassar girls), but if Thomas
Brinkmann laid every lock groove end to end, I wouldn't be surprised.

LH

>* For the curious, I was 3, 4, and 6, and during those years I
>attended Arnold Gesell's summer laboratory in child develoopment (or
>so the ancestral legend handed down to me says).  Of course, the
>Gesells do connect Yale and Vassar.
>
>JSB
>
>At 3/6/2009 09:21 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 2:48 PM -0500 3/3/09, Bill Palmer wrote:
>>>I'm thinking that linguists are like economists, who, in the well known
>>>phrase, could be laid end to end and never reach a conclucion.
>>>
>>>Bill
>>
>>Not quite as vivid as Dorothy Parker's well-known variation,
>>involving "Vassar girls".
>>
>>LH
>>
>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>>>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 2:24 PM
>>>Subject: Re: Snow
>>>
>>>>---------------------- Information from the mail
>>>>header -----------------------
>>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>>>>Subject:      Re: Snow
>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>        MWDEU's examples are "Ten dollars is all I have left," "Two
>>>>miles is as far as they can walk," and "Two thirds of the area is under
>>>>water."  In such cases, a singular verb seems far preferable, although
>>>>you can contrive examples such as "I came to town with forty silver
>>>>dollars, and now ten dollars are all I have left."
>>>>
>>>>        On reflection, I believe that the analysis given by Arnold
>>>>Zwicky (and, posting earlier, Larry Horn) is superior to the one I had
>>>>given (not that that should be surprising).  I had suggested that a
>>>>singular verb could be used if the subject were considered to be a
>>>>single expectation.  That doesn't hold up very well with sentences such
>>>>as *"Thirteen crates of oranges is expected," although it again is
>>>>probably possible to contrive an example allowing a singular verb.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>John Baker
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
>>>>Of Arnold Zwicky
>>>>Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 11:04 AM
>>>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>>Subject: Re: Snow
>>>>
>>>>(i've reorganized the postings in this thread to put them into temporal
>>>>sequence.)
>>>>
>>>>>On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Bill Palmer
>>>>><w_a_palmer at bellsouth.net>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Bianca Solorzano of CBS News reported this evening that "13 inches of
>>>>
>>>>>>snow are expected in New York."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The expectations are for what: inches or snow?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>"Is" or "are"?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>>>>>Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
>>>>>Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 10:26 PM
>>>>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>>>Subject: Re: Snow
>>>>>
>>>>>The object of a preposition cannot be the subject of a sentence. So
>>>>>"inches," not "snow," is (not "are") the subject, and "are" (not "is")
>>>>
>>>>>is correct.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>On Mar 1, 2009, at 8:06 PM, John Baker wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>        I would think that the subject could be either "inches" (in
>>>>>which case "are" would be correct) or "13 inches of snow,"
>>>>>considered as
>>>>>a single expectation (in which case "is" would be correct).  MWDEU, at
>>>>
>>>>>56, seems to prefer the singular verb, though I am comfortable with
>>>>>either.
>>>>
>>>>MWDEU's examples are not as complex as "13 inches of snow".  what makes
>>>>this NP complex is that there are two possible analyses for it
>>>>(corresponding to the two interpretations John Baker sees): one in which
>>>>"13 inches" is the head and "of snow" is a complement to it, and one in
>>>>which "snow" is the head and "13 inches" is a quantity determiner
>>>>(requiring that the head be marked by the preposition "of").  in the
>>>>first, the NP is plural, because its head is plural; in the second, the
>>>>NP is singular, because its head (the mass noun
>>>>"snow") is singular.
>>>>
>>>>like John Baker, i'm comfortable with either, though some circumstances
>>>>would favor one over the other.
>>>>
>>>>arnold
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>
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>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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