[Ads-l] "split of a three-game series"

[Joel Berson]

I don't see what the difficulty is -- that is, I can find only one interpretation.  Unless the students thought "salvages" was the old spelling for 'savages", perhaps appropriate for a "tribe".

Joel

      From: Geoffrey Nunberg <nunberg at ISCHOOL.BERKELEY.EDU>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 12:13 AM
 Subject: [ADS-L] "split of a three-game series"
   
A propos (well, not really), the discussion puts me in mind of a story Peter Trudgill tells, which I mentioned on Language Log back in 2004. Peter was visiting Cleveland and saw this on the sports page of the Plain Dealer:

TRIBE HOMER BARRAGE SALVAGES SPLIT
Peter said he took the page back with him to Reading and posted it on the door of his office, challenging the students in the linguistics program to decipher it (or even confidently identify the verb). He told me he had no takers


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


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