externalized inflection

[Arnold Zwicky]

Brian Hitchcock wrote:

 >Finally, someone (a UCLA alumnus or alumna, no doubt) dared to conjugate the faux verb sign-up,  exactly as one logically would if it were a verb, without noticing the absurdity thereof!<

i went back to look at the original citation, from Wilson Gray on 12/6:

 >"Looking for a perfect holiday gift for your little [California] Aggies? _Sign-up them_ for a Jr. Aggie Club membership!"

 >-California Aggie Alumni Assoc.

[factual note: the California Aggie school is UC Davis, which is very much in northern California, not UCLA.  so Hitchcock's ravings about southern California speakers are beside the point.  (Wilson Gray is a Davis alumnus, by the way, which is why he got the Aggie e-mail.)]

punctuation is irrelevant here; the example is equally problematic with solid ("signup"), hyphenated ("sign-up"), or separated ("sign up") spellings.  what's at issue is V+Prt with a definite pronominal object; this is a case where "particle movement" is virtually obligatory: "sign them up".  (there's a considerable literature on the subject.)

the location of inflection is also irrelevant here.  ??"sign up them" and "sign them up" both have the V "sign" as head, and both have it in the BSE form (which shows no visible inflection).

but Hitchcock goes on to complain about hyphenated ("sign-up") and solid ("lookup") spellings for V+Prt combinations; these things *are* units, so the spellings, though non-standard, are natural (but widespread, and not only in California, northern or southern).  Hitchcock goes on to argue that if V+Prt combinations were units (they are lexical units, and in things like "look up the number", syntactic constituents as well), you'd expect externalized inflection, and he maintains that the absurdity of "sign-upped", "loginning", "shutdowned", "lookupped", and the like shows they aren't units.  in fact, the non-standard externalized inflections do occur, but not apparently in great numbers (and many of the examples are from non-native speakers) -- and the spelling seems to be irrelevant, since externalization occurs with all three spellings, including the separated one:

  Hey everyone just sign upped to the site and looking for other soon to be mommys like me.
http://forum.baby-gaga.com/about230264.html

  ok, so i log in'ed at https://store.playstation.com/login.gvm and the language is, well not english, i assume its japanese since the acc i log inned with is the Japanese PSN acc i made.
http://www.gamespot.com/monster-hunter-portable-3rd/forum/noob-but-i-do-have-codes-already-56638425

  sorry last time i log outed, huh?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chester-Policarpio/191655120871353

  I’ve been shut downed by the 6th girl in my life, Should I just give up?
http://help.com/post/214158-ive-been-shut-downed-by-the

to get back to [V+Prt] + Pro: things like "sign up them" 'sign them up' are actually very common, *much* more common than externalized inflection.  i don't know anything about the social or geographical distribution of such things, but it would bear some looking into.

(additional note: this soft constraint on V+Prt units allows us to distinguish [V+Prt] + Pro from V + [P+Pro]: "look up it" is problematic in the first structure, fine in the second ("We reached the foot of the mountain and looked up it").)

arnold

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