former Beatle

[Randy Alexander]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> all over the media: the news that "former Beatle" Ringo Starr celebrates his 70th birthday today. Â it's clear what is meant; the reference is to his having been a Beatle before they split up, oh so long ago now. Â so he was a Beatle and he isn't now, but that's not because of a change in him (as with "former President"), but because of a change in the Beatles.
>
> in tensed clauses, the verb "be" in the past is neutral as between the ways in which it could come about that
> Â SUBJ be INDEF-PRED-NOM ("Ringo was (once) a Blupp")
> was true at time T in the past but is no longer true now. Â so is
> Â once INDEF-PRED-NOM ("Once a Blupp, Ringo ...")
>
> however, for me
> Â ex-PRED-NOM ("ex-Blupp")
> and
> Â former PRED-NOM ("former Blupp")
> have only the understanding that the status of the referent of the whole nominal has changed, and not that the status of the referent of the predicate nominal has changed. Â alas, i have no easy way to pack the other understanding into a nominal. Â other people seem to allow both understandings for "ex-Blupp" and "former Blupp", with the appropriate one picked out using real-life knowledge, the way "once a Blupp" works for me.

I understand your first two paragraphs, but could you give some
examples for the above paragraph?

Thanks,

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
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Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog

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