Before someone beats me to the punch...

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:29 AM -0800 3/3/11, Margaret Lee wrote:
>The 'my bad' nouning of adjective does not seem to fit the generic
>plural form. Your examples seem to refer to humans, animals, and
>things? --Margaret Lee

Right; I don't think that's part of the same productive process at
all.  We don't get "a bad" (or at least not freely) meaning "a bad
thing".  AHD4 has "weighing the bad against the good", both involving
mass nouns (cf. "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good"), but
"I did (him) a bad" seems marked.   "My bad" strikes me as sui
generis.

LH

>   ________________________________ ...I meant to say generic plural
>*or mass* readings, as in "The rare tends to be more expensive than
>the plentiful" >Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 10:24:49 -0500 >To: American
>Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> >From: Laurence Horn
><laurence.horn at yale.edu> >Subject: Re: the rare > >I've always been
>puzzled by the fact that this only works to yield >generic
>plurals-- > >"Give me your tired, your poor,..." >"Ye have the poor
>always with you" >"The rain falls on the rich and poor alike" >*The
>poor is not faring as well as the rich in the current economy. >*A
>rich does not want his daughter to marry a poor. >*The poor on the
>sidewalk asked me for a handout > >--while in, say, French, neither
>genericity nor plural is required >for the nouning of "(le/un)
>pauvre".  This is not a new discovery, >but as I say it's always
>surprised me. > >LH
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