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

[Laurence Horn]

And even if the Reading-ites parsed the headline sufficiently to get the verb, they might have misdeciphered the remainder.  For example, here's an alternative plausible scenario for those more familiar with American settlement patterns and Balkan history than the particulars of American League baseball.

According to their oral history of their nation or tribe, the Lumbee of North Carolina () trace their ancestry to a blending (or ethnic portmanteau) of the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island and the Croatan group of Algonquins (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatan). But it's natural to confuse the Croatans with the Croatians, so during the civil war that erupted in the early 90s in the former Yugoslavia, it was natural for the Lumbee to identify with the Croatians and fear for their fate when the Serbs were shelling the major cities (Zagreb, Dubrovnik).  The great oral poet, the Homer of the Lumbee tribe, was rushed to the Dalmatian coast to save the day, and fearing Dubrovnik was a lost cause, he and his coterie headed further south to the next most important coastal city, set up in the Roman amphitheater, and set to loudly declaiming his epic poem over and over at the top of his lungs until the Serbs gave up and the Croats maintained their hold on the city, as commemorated in the headline--"Tribe Homer barrage salvages Split".  

LH

  



> On Jul 21, 2015, at 11:30 AM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:
> 
> But shouldn't the verb be "barrages" for students in Cleveland?  Or must they accept a plural verb form for the collective "tribe"?
> 
> Joel
> 
>      From: Dave Hause <dwhause at CABLEMO.NET>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 11:03 AM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "split of a three-game series"
> 
> Tribe Homer (the other two military units called tribes were Euclid & Plato) 
> barrage (fire artillery on) the strategic road junction of Salvages Split.
> Dave Hause
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Baker, John
> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 9:08 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "split of a three-game series"
> 
> How can the verb not be "salvages"?  I assume it means that the Tribe (pres=
> umably a reference to the Cleveland Indians) was performing poorly in a (2-=
> game or longer) series of baseball games, but then they had a barrage of ho=
> me runs, so the series ended up being split between them and the other team=
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of=
> Geoffrey Nunberg
> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2015 12:14 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "split of a three-game series"
> 
> A propos (well, not really), the discussion puts me in mind of a story Pete=
> r 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 d=
> oor of his office, challenging the students in the linguistics program to d=
> ecipher it (or even confidently identify the verb). He told me he had no ta=
> kers
> 
> 
> Geoff
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