the verbs SUBSTITUTE

[Joel Berson]

----- Original Message ----
From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Tue, April 26, 2011 10:39:48 AM
Subject: [ADS-L] the verbs SUBSTITUTE

we've had this discussion (often at length) on this list several times since
2004, and i posted a compact account on Language Log in 2007.  (so it's not
really helpful or informative to tell the list again, and again, how much you
*hate* "innovative substitute" or "reversed substitute", how you can't
understand them, etc.  they're not going away, no matter how often you rant
about them.)

from the 2007 posting, using a Bizarro cartoon as its text:
( http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005255.html ;
formatting removed in copying from LLog, alas)

For details of the various uses of substitute and their history, I refer you to
a paper by David Denison, still in press but available in .pdf format on his
website.

According to Denison, the development comes in three stages.  In a nutshell:

1.  standard substitute: substitute NEW for OLD (i.e., substitute a fried chunk
of your left buttock for the pork chop) -- vs. replace OLD with/by NEW (i.e.,
replace the pork chop with/by a fried chunk of your left buttock).  Note: the
prepositions are important.

2.  encroached [or innovative] substitute: substitute OLD with/by NEW (i.e.,
substitute the pork chop with/by a fried chunk of your left buttock).  The verb
substitute encroaches on replace by taking on its argument structure (with the
result that the order of the two arguments mirrors the sequence of the two
denotata in time and their information status, in both cases old before new).
But standard substitute continues in use; the two meanings are usually
distinguished by preposition choice -- though to judge from comments in my
e-mail, this is a subtlety that escapes many people.  Encroached substitutehas
been around since the 17th century, and as MWDEU notes, despite having been
condemned by many commentators, it's been appearing in standard writing on both
sides of the Atlantic for a long time (and has been recognized as a standard
variant in Merriam-Webster dictionaries since WNI2 in 1934).

3.  reversed substitute: substitute OLD for NEW (i.e., substitute the pork chop
for a fried chunk of your left buttock, as in the Bizarro cartoon).  This one --
a blend of standard and encroached substitute -- is genuinely recent, apparently
becoming widespread in the U.K. only about twenty years ago, though now
spreading to the U.S., as in the cartoon (the cartoonist Dan Piraro is
American).  Denison argues that the vector for its spread in the U.K. was the
language of sport, in particular football/soccer: the spread of reversed
substitute beginning in the mid-80s follows the institution of tactical
substitution in soccer in the 1966-67 season.  As Chris Lance put it in e-mail
to me:

If a manager makes a substitution during the course of a game, then the player
taken off is said to have been substituted. From there, it's a small step to say
that the player taken off has been substituted for the player who replaced him.
This usage now seems to have spread to other contexts.

Understandably, many speakers have trouble interpreting reversed substitute,
which functions as the converse of the standard verb.  You have to rely on
context to figure out which meaning is intended.

What context does the person reading the doctor's order or prescription have?

Joel

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