But for (from ID TV)

[Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700]

You're certainly right about people getting things backwards. But while
Dr. Phil's use of "predecessor" (instead of "successor") could possibly
be excused as a slip of the tongue (despite his having repeated it
several times) or maybe as just a defect in vocabulary, the ID TV
example presents a logical tangle that I'm still trying to unravel. It
wasn't that I was expecting "kept apart" rather than "brought together"
but that I was taken aback by the plugging of "but for" into an
affirmative cause-effect construction (i.e., it was only a random
Internet search that brought the two together). My experience with
"but-for" has been limited to contrary-to-fact conditions, as in "But
for [if not for, except for] a random Internet search, the two [killer
and victim] would never have been brought together" or "But for a random
Internet search, the two would have remained forever apart," or as in
your example "There but for fortune go you or I."

Where are you, Daniel, if I may ask, that you get Letterman on "two
weeks delay"?

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of David A. Daniel
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 11:05 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: But for (from ID TV)

---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
Subject:      Re: But for (from ID TV)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------

It's backwards, eh? "There but for fortune go you or I" indicates
fortune
intervened to keep something bad from happening. Not sure what that TV
quote
indicates, though it seems that someone is trying to say that a killer
and
victim were brought together, rather than kept apart, by a random
internet
search. Yes? People get stuff backwards a lot. I just watched a
Letterman,
with Dr. Phil as guest. (We get Letterman on two weeks delay here.)
Letterman was saying that he figures if he is screwing up his 8-year-old
son, it won't be his problem because he's old and will be dead. "It'll
be
the stepfather's problem." Dr. Phil twice used "predecessor" to refer to
the
stepfather, the one coming AFTER Letterman. "You mean if you screw up
your
kid now it will be your predecessor's problem?" After the first time, I
kept
waiting for him to correct himself, but then he said it again!
DAD



Poster:       "Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700"
              <lynne.hunter at NAVY.MIL>
Subject:      But for (from ID TV)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
---

"It was but for a random Internet search that the two [killer and
victim] were brought together."


Lynne Hunter

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org