"Let's get you that tattoo finished."

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:38 PM -0400 4/27/11, Wilson Gray wrote:
>On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 4:59 AM, Damien Hall <D.Hall at kent.ac.uk> wrote:
>>  I remember an American professor's remarking on my saying (quite
>>innocently) "I'm waiting for her to send me that data". ? He
>>maintained that such pre-posed datives were at best uncommon in
>>American English and that he would have had to say "I'm waiting for
>>her to send that data to me". ? What do others think?

I think he pulled that datum out of his ass, or a hole in the
ground--he probably couldn't tell the difference.  That sort of
unsubstantiable random dictum (randictum?) gives me a pain...oops, I
mean it gives a pain to me.

LH

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