More on substituting

[Jonathan Lighter]

Dan, I could not have said it better.

JL

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: More on substituting
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Do you really think the lack of intelligibility of a substitution
> reversal is inflated?
>
> I am shocked that a substitution reversal could survive an editing
> process, not because it is grammatically incorrect but because it
> completely miscommunicates information. That could not be said about
> any of the other items on Arnold's list. A distinction with a
> difference.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 14, 2011, at 11:15 AM, Ron Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM> wrote:
>
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Ron Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: More on substituting
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Thanks for this, Arnold. And all the inflated rhetoric about nightmares
> and the lack of intelligibility of supposed "errors" seems particularly
> stupid coming from an alleged linguist.
> >
> > Sent from my Droid Charge on Verizon 4GLTE
> >
> > ------Original Message------
> > From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> > To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Date: Sunday, August 14, 2011 7:03:47 AM GMT-0700
> > Subject: Re: [ADS-L] More on substituting
> >
> > On Aug 14, 2011, at 4:40 AM, Jon Lighter wrote:
> >
> >> Fox News reports that workers at the Ground Zero site have been getting
> >> drunk on their lunch hour, "taking lunchtime at the local pub,
> substituting
> >> food for shots and suds!"
> >>
> >> The line, as part of a quick news summary, was evidently scripted and
> not
> >> spontaneous.
> >>
> >> So ol am I that even though I get the idea, I still can't "make sense"
> of
> >> the syntax. It's nightmarish.
> >
> > this is a return to the topic of reversed "substitute" ("substitute" OLD
> "for" NEW), branching off from the possibly related topic of PREFERRED "is
> no substitute for" DISPREFERRED.  as i said here  only four months ago:
> >
> >> 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.)<
> >
> > i really don't see the point of people's bringing up every occurrence of
> a variant they just hate, when this variant is not an inadvertent error, is
> already widespread, and is spreading further, and especially when the
> variant is been discussed many times on this list.  do people really think
> that if they complain about every occurrence that comes to their attention,
> they'll convince others to stop using the variant -- that ranting will make
> it go away?  especially, do people *on this list* (devoted as it is to
> dialects and variation) think that way?  (peevers and word-ragers and so on
> seem to think this is so, but people on this list?)
> >
> > if so, we can expect avalanches of sightings of:
> >
> >  "of"-marked exceptional degree modification ("too big of a dog");
> >
> >  nominative conjoined objects ("between you and I");
> >
> >  double "is" (Isis) ("The problem is is that ...");
> >
> >  intensifying "literally" ("I was literally out of my mind");
> >
> >  speaker-oriented (sentence modifier) "hopefully";
> >
> >  WH+"that" complements ("I wonder how many people that were at the
> party");
> >
> > and much much more.  oi.
> >
> > arnold
> >
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