fatally turn

[Neal Whitman]

Sounds like someone asked the same question I ask myself. "Did he then fire,
and was the wound fatal?" Their solution was probably hasty, with "fatally"
modifying the part of the verb that's not actually there.

I blogged about "turning the gun on himself" a couple of times, most
recently at:
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/turning-the-gun-on-yourself-revisited/

Geoff Pullum wrote about it too, on LL:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1223

Neal

----- Original Message -----
From: "victor steinbok" <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 8:02 PM
Subject: fatally turn


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      fatally turn
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From the news:
>
> A man shot dead at least three people and wounded at least six others in a
>> Nevada restaurant before fatally turning the gun on himself.
>
>
> VS-)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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