"Look less-powerful weapons"

[Dan Goncharoff]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303506404577444492476769520.html


"like" has now been added after "look".

DanG


On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 8:36 PM, Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Look less-powerful weapons"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 5:31 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 3, 2012, at 1:08 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> > > Opening sentence in a WSJ article:
> > >
> > > "Take the nuclear option off the table, and some patents look
> > less-powerful
> > > weapons."
> > >
> > > I have never noticed this construction [N-look-N without a preposition
> or
> > > some form of to be] before in an edited publication.
> >
> > _look_ 'look to be' takes a predicative AdjP in English dialects
> > generally.  OED2 lists it as taking predicatives in general -- including
> NP
> > ("he looks a fool") and PP ("he looked to be in great anxiety") -- though
> > in fact these last two possibilities are usually associated with BrE
> rather
> > than AmE.
> >
> > perhaps the construction with NP and PP is spreading to AmE, or perhaps
> > the WSJ writer has some BrE influence in their speech.
> >
>
> I think that's a possibility, and I agree with everything above except
> "look to be" being BrE.
>
> COCA 1159/425,000,000
> BNC 207/100,000,000
>
> These numbers are pretty close, so "[look] to be" ([look] being the lemma)
> would have to be said just to be "pond agnostic".
>
> To me the WSJ quote just looks like an editing oversight.  Dan, no link?
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Xiamen, China
> Blogs:
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> Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
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>
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