"Don't just do something...."

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's only one generation earlier, Ben!

To repeat: Is the human mind even remotely that sluggish? Is the original
statement
actually another meme rather than the spontaneously recurring product of
independent linguistic free will?

JL
On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Don't just do something...."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > Surprisingly, even the most reductive version of the original statement
> > ("Don't stand there. Do something.") only goes back to 1936 in GB:
> >
> >
> http://books.google.com/books?id=3DLYcUAAAAIAAJ&q=3D%22don't+stand+there,+d=
> >
> o+something%22&dq=3D%22don't+stand+there,+do+something%22&hl=3Den&ei=3DOQK_=
> >
> TaTGLPDr0QGXtdXWBQ&sa=3DX&oi=3Dbook_result&ct=3Dresult&resnum=3D3&ved=3D0CD=
> > QQ6AEwAjha
> >
> > I am sure this phenomenon (which I'm calling "no evidence of the
> obvious")
> > says as much about language and society as it may about linguistic
> > documentation, but I hate to think what.
>
> If it makes you feel any better, it also appears in Arthur Law's play
> _The New Boy_ (published in 1904, staged in 1894):
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=P8QVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA63
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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