an unexpected comparative

[David Metevia]

And the ad for a restaurant: Feeling a little Mexican tonight?

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:26 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: an unexpected comparative
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 10:53 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> At 10:29 PM -0400 10/11/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>Oh, now I get it. Your daughter said "butch-er," thinking [[butch]er],
>>>but you heard "butcher" and thought [butcher]! :-)
>>>
>>
>> It really is quite a nice one, since the Janus-faced syntactic frame
>> is necessary:  "N is butcher" or "N is a butcher" would disambiguate
>> in opposite directions, but "N is a little butcher" works (at least
>> at first blush) for both.
>
> Not unlike the various jokes about knowing a little Greek, eating a
> little Chinese, etc.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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