"PIN" (UNCLASSIFIED)

Dan Goncharoff thegonch at GMAIL.COM
Fri Aug 13 18:39:35 UTC 2010


OK, I am still missing points here. Besides not understanding who the
"we" represents in the second sentence, I have no trouble admitting
that "pro football" refers today to the NFL, and included the AFL for
a while. Neither does the Pro Football Hall of Fame, whose name seems
to prove the point. I also admit that "pro basketball" means to me the
NBA, and I would expect some clarification if the user of the phrase
meant the CBA, the development league, or European leagues, or even
the WNBA. I may be behind the times on the WNBA, but that is how I
still think.

If someone refers to "professional baseball", without specifically
mentioning the Major Leagues, I assume they are including the minor
leagues, independent leagues, the Negro Leagues, etc.

I believe a lot of people think about these terms the way I do.

DanG

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------The "synonymous with professional X"
> argument also has had to deal historically with the question of rival
> professional leagues not under the aegis of the NBA (i.e. the ABA) or
> of the NFL (there have been a few of those), but almost all of these
> have since folded and/or been victims of unfriendly takeovers.
> (Ditto the WHL for hockey vis-a-vis the NHL.)  Still, I'm not sure
> we'd want to admit synonymy given the history and future possibility
> of such rival leagues.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list