[Ads-l] fuck them

[Laurence Horn]

Oops, beat me to the punch (but I provide the ingredients, so it's all good).  As Geoff says, 1973 is the usual pub. date given but the copyright note in my copy says 1971.  As Wavy Gravy sort of said, if you can remember accurate dates from that era, you weren't there.  Sorry to Arnold (and Peter Salus, Bob Binnick, and Tony Vanek) for omitting the editors names when I gave the cite.



> On Aug 29, 2016, at 3:56 PM, Geoffrey Steven Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> You need to read the classic article
> 
> Dong, Q. P. 1973[1992 reprint] English sentences without overt grammatical subject, published in Studies out in left field, edited by, among others, Arnold of this list. Although it's tongue in cheek, and extremely crude, it also makes a clear syntactic case (using the syntactic argumentation of the time) that these are not imperatives.
> 
> It can be found at
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.google.com_-23q-3Denglish-2Bsentences-2Bwithout-2Bovert-2Bgrammatical-2Bsubject&d=CwIFAw&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=WHCJOTqMz47_SXFdk5aRcxh2O_4cSZIzyHrPCbipdaU&s=RhCIPYs_h6WaLBxxtY4WXgD9jDIAsx4GOfnNoVAbaco&e= 
> 
> and is also still available from Benjamins, who republished it in the nineties.
> I believe Larry has a (pswaydonymish) article in there too.
> 
> Geoff
> 
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
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> 
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 3:41 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: fuck them
>     
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      fuck them
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> 
> I always assumed =E2=80=9Cfuck you=E2=80=9D is an imperative, but it=E2=80=
> =99s not clear what is being commanded (unless it means something vague =
> like =E2=80=9Cgo jump in a lake=E2=80=9D), and even more to the point, =
> the form =E2=80=9Cfuck them=E2=80=9D surely cannot be imperative.
> 
> Is this a subjunctive desiderative such as =E2=80=9CMay it rain today!"? =
> I don=E2=80=99t know what else to call these forms.
> 
> Benjamin Barrett
> Formerly of Seattle, WA=
> 
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