[Ads-l] Facebook and "via"

[Joel Berson]

For me, an additional problem with Bernie Sanders "from Brooklyn via Vermont" is that I think of "via" as connoting "a step in transit" -- that is, Sanders originated in Brooklyn, and went via Vermont to somewhere else.  But Sanders is still in (or "of", as a Senator) Vermont.

Joel

      From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Saturday, August 1, 2015 12:01 PM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Facebook
   
> On Aug 1, 2015, at 11:40 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Aug 1, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> 
>>> On Aug 1, 2015, at 1:00 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>> 
>>> "[Bernie Sanders,] a 73-year-old Jew _from Brooklyn via Vermont_ ..."
>>> 
>>> Shouldn't that be
>>> 
>>> "... a 73-year-old Jew _from Vermont via Brooklyn_ ..."?
>>> 
>>> Or have I, once again, fallen behind the curve of language-change?
>> 
>> Ah, another reversal?  Actually, I think I'd go for _from Brooklyn via
>> Vermont_.  For me the "via" is 'by way of', so I'd take someone who told
>> me he was from Vermont via Brooklyn as saying he started out in Vermont
>> and spent some time in Brooklyn (probably Williamsburg, the most
>> Vermonty neighborhood of Brooklyn) before getting here.  Someone from
>> Vermont via Brooklyn would talk the way someone from Brooklyn (via
>> anywhere) like Bernie does.  Haven't checked OED to see what sort of
>> glosses and cites they show, this is just my own intuition.  Has there
>> been a change of the "substitute" kind here?
> 
> Facebook may be contributing to confusion over the direction of "via,"
> as noted by Barbara Need back in 2010.

Aha!  That explains it.  Wilson is on Facebook, so he's adopted the innovative form.  I'm not, so I haven't.  Finally I get to be an older fogey than Wilson!

LH

> Thread starts here:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listserv.linguistlist.org_pipermail_ads-2Dl_2010-2DFebruary_096519.html&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=5FxhOmLeQa1Kzo7c5j_t3oI_vLoWaa4HgnwnAF9rCzM&s=p0aWZSghkeDMiSesr0KcAMUf3qjCdU93ckL_RQyjOfo&e= 
> 
> Barbara: "I am getting FB updates labeled X via Y where  message is
> posted by X who got it from Y.  (So if a link is put up marked John
> via Mary then John is a person you know and is the immediate source of
> the link; you may or may not know Mary and she is John's source). I
> can't get that and the OED definition does not seem to work either. I
> would have to say either John from Mary or Mary via John."
> 
> Victor S: "It's not obvious from FB PR, but this is a recent addition.
> This only happens when X clicks on 'share this' on something that has
> been posted by Y. Normally, I would have expected [From] Y * via X,
> but the full FB syntax appears to be X [got this] * via Y. If you
> interpret it this way, there is nothing new to 'via'. I've been using
> it on FB for a long time, e.g., when posting the original links I got
> from other people or from blogs. But the new part is the FB now does
> this automatically when you click on 'Share this' link."
> 
> Barbara: "Except that you have to intuit [got this]--and I don't. I
> intuit [sent this]."
> 
> --bgz
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=5FxhOmLeQa1Kzo7c5j_t3oI_vLoWaa4HgnwnAF9rCzM&s=50LKu1gMXVJFjuPTgK5OaqyTpb8iJWr4fN2oKx69BWI&e= 



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