More redundancy

[Laurence Horn]

On Nov 4, 2012, at 10:49 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> On Nov 4, 2012, at 7:41 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>> Is the leading receiver in terms of yardage also a redundancy?
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 10:38 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> During the Atlanta-vs.-Dallas football game tonight, the NBC commentator
>>> has remarked at least twice that Jason Witten of the Cowboys is "the
>>> leading receiver in terms of receptions."
>
> i take Dan G. to be suggesting that "leading receiver in terms of receptions" is to be understood as "leading receiver in terms of number of receptions", which is *not* redundant; number of receptions is only one of several metrics for "leading receiver".
>
Exactly--the latter being a more telling, but less frequently invoked, metric.  Traditionally, the stats list for receivers are ordered by number of receptions, which has always struck me as misleading compared to a listing by the sum of yards of passes received.  The former tends often to favor tight ends like Witten, who tend to catch many shorter passes rather than longer, but fewer, ones (and/or more passes the receivers turn into long ones by piling on a lot of YAC = yards after the catch).

LH

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