Modal + PP

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Jan 3 17:51:09 UTC 2012


On Jan 3, 2012, at 11:56 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> On Jan 3, 2012, at 8:47 AM, Alice Faber wrote:
>>
>> From a forum posting about today's wind storm in the UK:
>>
>> "We‚re in central Scotland. The Forth Bridge is shut, cos you don‚t want
>> blown off that fucker"
>>
>> (Yes, it's *that* kind of forum, but I was struck by the "want blown
>> off" construction from somewhere other than western PA and its environs.)
>
> discussions of such uses of want/need geberally trace them back to Scotland (or to Scots-Irish more generally).
>
> arnold

Michael Montgomery's work on this construction is especially explicit about the Scotch-Irish heritage.

LH

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