[Ads-l] Language and children; flee/flea. Was: Antedating of Flea Market
Cohen, Gerald Leonard
gcohen at MST.EDU
Sat Apr 2 15:03:08 UTC 2016
I've been collecting information on children's language, including
children's misperceptions of adult speech. In this regard, I
noticed David Daniel's 2008 message below, in which a child
humorously mistook the verb "flee" to be the noun "flea."
Might I now ask David: Does he have first-hand knowledge
of this humorous incident? (Did he hear it himself? Was it told
about a child of one of his friends or relatives?) Or was it
perhaps a fabricated bit of humor that can't reliably be judged
to have actually occurred?
Gerald Cohen
________________________________
Original message to American Dialect Society on behalf
of David A. Daniel (dad at POKERWIZ.COM<mailto:dad at POKERWIZ.COM>)
Sent: Wed 7/9/2008 10:52 AM
Subject: Re: Antedating of Flea Market
Sunday school teacher, reading Bible passage: "The man named Lot was warned
to take his wife and flee out of the city but his wife looked back and was
turned to salt."
Concerned four-year-old: "What happened to the flea?"
DAD
<snip>
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