for your collection of inverse "substitute" examples...

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Nov 18 20:59:10 UTC 2013


Here's a clear case in which the innovative reading is pragmatically forced, given the implausibility of the proposition that we're often told to throw out healthier vegetable oils and replace them with saturated animal fats:

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We’re often told to substitute saturated animal fats for healthier vegetable oils, and while that is generally good advice, a new study suggests certain vegetable oils haven’t been shown to live up to the claim that they lower cholesterol or prevent heart disease.

http://tinyurl.com/lkwfnps
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Note that I'm not presenting this as a new construction; Arnold in particular has blogged insightfully on the factors involved in the range of old and new constructions involving "substitute for/with".  But few examples I've seen are as unambiguously "substitute OLD for NEW" (and thus predictably weird for those of you who share my old-fogeyspeak dialect).

LH

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