"Methamphetamine prose"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sounds perfectly normal to me. In fact, I'm sure I say it.

I have no idea how long I've said it. All my life? Possibly not, but a long,
long time.

Would be surprised to see it in formal prose though. The writing part of my
brain tells me it's nonstandard

JL
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Methamphetamine prose"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Back in the '70's I read an article about speed that contained an
> > anecdote something like this:
> >
> > Instead of working on 25-page paper due at eight o'clock the next
> > morning, guy is getting down with his old lady. Suddenly, he remembers
> > about the paper and freaks. ...
>
>
> I don't know why, but in contrast to most people on this list, who seem to
> be more attracted to lexicographic phenomena, I seem to be more attracted
> to
> syntactic phenomena.
>
> Googling "remember about" and looking at the first ten results, all of them
> have "remember" as a transitive verb where the object is fronted, and
> "about
> X" is a modifier.  But here, Wilson is using "remember" as an intransitive
> verb, with "about X" as a complement.
>
> Does anyone have anything to say about the distribution of this usage?
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> Blogs:
> Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
> Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
> Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog
>
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