is "trade" the new "substitute"?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/26/2014 08:03 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>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.

I think Randy missed that for Larry (and me) who
has which must also be considered.  For us, I
have the item after "you", you have the item after "for".

On the other hand, in context, when two parties
are conversing, they probably already know who
has what and will not be confused by any switching of X and Y.

Joel


>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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> >>
> >
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