"What's this software? Like, 9 years old?"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Aug 27 20:04:14 UTC 2011


On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 12:30 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you inserting the first question mark prosodically? I would expect a
> single sentence in both cases... What's==is+[qualifier]
>

I'm not sure what you mean.

IAC, _What's this software? …?_ was written in a post to a software
site. _What's he gonna pay? …?_ I heard.

I'd have expected, "What's he gonna _do_? _Pay_ two men to do the same job?"

In the former case, I'd have expected "What's this software_'s age_?
Like 9 years old?"

Or something like that.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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