facacta

[David Bergdahl]

We're not the only ones to discuss it, see Yahoo Answers at
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070816211548AAksJkd
-db

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: facacta
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:48 PM -0500 11/18/09, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>from Rolling Stone, Nov. 26, 2009, p. 49:
>>
>>===
>>Springsteen insisted that he and Billy Joel sing "New York State of Mind."
>>"He loves singing that song," says Joel. "He always fucks up the phrasing,
>>but it's Bruce's way of doing it, and in some _facacta_ [italicized] way, it
>>actually works."
>>===
>>
>>Yitalian. Who knew?
>
> Mebbe a loanword from Ladino = 'overdone, overcooked' < _fare_ + _cocta_
> Reminds me of a suggestion in a linguistics paper awhile back that in
> interpreting multiple negation, we need to admit alongside "Duplex
> negatio affirmat" the supplementary principles "Triplex negatio
> confundit" and "Quadruplex negatio fer'blondiat", as illustrated by
> e.g.
>
> "No one denies that a baby with a neural tube defect isn't a
> catastrophe, but..."
> "Bernie produced what Bernie is supposed to produce, but I don't
> think, either, that you can single out Bernie as not a guy who is not
> part of the disappointment."
>
> --where "fer'blondiat" is identified as a somewhat obscure verb
> borrowed into late Latin standardly pronounced "farblondzhet".   (CLS
> 27, 1991, p. 104)
>
> But "facacta" is more likely to have been seriously intended...
>
> LH
>
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