[Ads-l] Is this what it seems?

Neal Whitman nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Sat Aug 8 12:34:04 UTC 2015


I take it to be a copula-less cleft construction: "It's only women 
[that/who are] in the shop."

Neal

On 8/7/2015 11:01 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Is this what it seems?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Valentine=E2=80=99s Day is one of the few times of the year when most China Star
> customers are male. Usually,_it's_ only women in the shop..."
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/learning-to-speak-lingerie
>
>
> Not "... there are/there're/there is/there's only women ..."?
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list