So Now

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/22/2010 11:01 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:

>I hear that "Now" as a discourse marker, pleonastic to be sure, marking the
>onset of a new item.

Ugh.  I hear it in second, third, etc. sentences of a single news
item (paragraph), when it is absolutely unnecessary and has no
connotation of chronology (as in "then" vs. "now").

Joel


>m a m
>
>On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > Used seemingly for the same purpose as "so" by virtually every TV
> > newscaster I hear (but, like Jon Lighter, I don't listen to Fox) is
> > the useless, uninformative, and time-wasting beginning of sentence
> > "now".  Now, has anyone written about that phenomenon?
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > At 5/22/2010 01:59 AM, Paul Frank wrote:
> >
> > ><
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22iht-currents.html?scp=2&sq=so&st=cse
> > >
> > >
> > >Paul Frank
> > >Translator
> > >German, French, Chinese > English
> > >Rue du Midi 1, Aigle, Switzerland
> > >cellphone: +41 (0)77 409 6132
> > >paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
> > >
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> >
>
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