Small and Little

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Perhaps Randy Newman was Swedish, as was my uncle, Otto Thorson. He knew a few brief, short, small Swedish Lutheran prayers.

The song may advocate suicide more than executions. It may be concerned with people who are short in the sense of nasty and brutish.
------Original Message------
From: Laurence Horn
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Small and Little
Sent: Jun 17, 2010 12:31 PM

At 8:59 AM -0700 6/17/10, Norm Jensen 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: Small and Little
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>At 3:34 PM +0000 6/17/10, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>>>It seems to me that, as second language "imperfections" go, this one
>>>is little and tiny. His English is definitely better than my Swedish.
>>>
>>>And maybe he was just attributing to BP the point of view expressed
>>>in the Billy Joel song:
>>
>>Wasn't that Randy Newman?
>>
>Randy Newman sang about Short People.
>
To be sure, but my point was that Ron, in referring to "the point of
view expressed in the Billy Joel song: small people got no reason to
live" was in fact thinking of the Randy Newman song.  As far as I
know, Billy Joel never wrote or sang in opposition to capital
punishment for small, short, or little people, as the case may be.

LH

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