is "trade" the new "substitute"?

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 26, 2014, at 7:22 PM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> I'm not sure how these two could be different:
>
> a. I'll trade you X for Y.
> b. I'll trade you Y for X.
>
> Or even:
>
> a. I'll trade you this for that.
> b. I'll trade you that for this.
>
> In either case X and Y switched places.

Let's say I'm the general manager of the Angels, whose star player is Mike Trout, and I call you, the general manager of the Detroit Tigers, whose star player is Miguel Cabrera.  In my dialect, I can say into the phone "I'll trade you Trout for Cabrera" but not "I'll trade you Cabrera for Trout".  Or, if you're not into baseball, let's say I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my lunchbox and you take a prosciutto and provolone sandwich out of yours.  I can offer to trade my PB&J for your prosicutto and provolone.  I can't, in my dialect, offer to trade your prosciutto and provolone for my PB&J.  The innovating speakers can do it either way, I'm told.

In your example, for me "I'll trade you my X for your Y" (or "this for that") is a possible offer, but not vice versa.  So maybe you're a speaker of what I'm calling the innovative dialect.  Similarly I can say (if I'm the Angels' GM) "I'll trade (you) Trout" but not "I'll trade (you) Cabrera"; I can only say "I'll trade for Cabrera".  Maybe I'm an old fogey on this.

LH



> On Mar 25, 2014 7:49 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      is "trade" the new "substitute"?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Has anyone encountered reversed "trade x for y" being used in a context in
>> which it's y that's acquired and x that's given up?  We've discussed (every
>> few months) the inverse "substitute", as in
>>
>> Traditional moussaka is done with eggplant. What we’ve done is substitute
>> eggplant for
>> potato.
>> —from Iron Chef America potato recipe show, via Victor Steinbok on this
>> listserv 11.8.11
>>
>> So the reversed or inverse "trade" would be an example like:
>>
>> I'll trade you A for B
>>
>> in which the speaker is proposing to relinquish B in exchange for
>> obtaining A, rather than the other way around.
>>
>> I'm told this is now common enough that some young whippersnappers
>> (trading e.g. video games or baseball cards or whatever) now no longer use
>> the verb "trade" because nobody knows what's being proposed, and instead
>> just goes with "I'll give you A for B", whose meaning I assume remains
>> unchanged.  Anyone familiar with this innovative use of "trade"?
>>
>> LH
>>
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