"Something there is that doesn=?windows-1252?Q?=92t_?=love retroactivity."

[Dan Goncharoff]

Now I am confused.

What is your "source" that includes "There is something that doesn't love a
wall"?

Google says Frost wrote "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

DanG


On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:18 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:
>  =?windows-1252?Q?Re=3A_=22Something_there_is_that_doesn=92t_love?
>               = =?windows-1252?Q?_retroactivity=2E=22?=
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> FWIW, I demur on the analysis.  As I said earlier, I think it's just
> topicalization of an indefinite, rare but (as work by Prince, Ward, Birner,
> Gundel et al shows) not unprecedented, even outside poetic contexts.  No
> heavy NP shift since the relative clause in question ("that doesn't love a
> wall") stays put, while its head is extracted (or lopped off and tossed
> forward).  The source is "There is something that doesn't love a wall".
>  Note that your immediate source below is *really* awkward, much more so
> than Frost's line.  Let a hundred analyses bloom.
>
> LH
>
> On Jan 6, 2014, at 11:57 AM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>
> > It's an allusion to the Robert Frost poem about walls, I assumed, and in
> > the poem I figure Frost did it for metrical reasons. As for correctness,
> > I take it to be a topicalization ("Something that doesn't love a wall,
> > there is") combined with heavy NP shift. So technically correct, but
> > awkward.
> >
> > Neal
> >
> > On 1/6/2014 10:45 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
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> >> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:
>  =?windows-1252?Q?=22Something_there_is_that_doesn=92t_love_retroa
> >>               ctivit?= =?windows-1252?Q?y=2E=22?=
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> I saw this today in the NYTimes:
> >>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/opinion/greenhouse-crack-cocaine-limbo.html
> >>
> >> It feels wrong to me, but I can't put my finger on it. Is it technically
> >> correct, but too Yoda-like? Help, please.
> >>
> >> DanG
> >>
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