[Ads-l] slown

[Laurence Horn]

> On Aug 2, 2017, at 11:22 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> It does seem as though the instances of “slown” found on the web are
> back-primed by a > following “down”
> 
> How? Does the speaker have in mind the letters, while keeping in mind that
> the pronunciation is different?

I don’t know how much effect the mental representation of the orthography has, but there’s a half-rhyme or almost-rhyme between /on/ and /aun/ that I’m guessing may be enough for priming purposes.  It would be interesting to consider a variant of our language, Shmenglish, which is identical to English except for “down” being spelled “daun”, and then to run a google (or shmoogle) search to see if there are fewer instances of “slown daun” than there are of “slown down” in our own English.

LH
> 
> On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 9:27 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> I assume pronounced “sloan” rather than to rhyme with “clown” (or
>> “down”).  There are limits to anticipatory assimilation, after all.
>> 
>> It does seem as though the instances of “slown” found on the web are
>> back-primed by a following “down”:
>> 
>> 
>> Examples of “slown” at https://www.wordnik.com/words/slown include the
>> following, a few from Amy Hempel’s “The Dog of the Marriage"
>> 
>> • “Time was slown way down,” he said, his eyes closed.
>> The Dog of the Marriage
>> 
>> • It was like this woman was getting just as slown down as I was, even
>> though she never touched the stuff.
>> The Dog of the Marriage
>> 
>> • There's many fronts causing these things to happen within the next few
>> years, Moore's law hasn't slown down, and it shows no signs of doing so,
>> quite the contrary.
>> --Top News
>> 
>> • Slumping Hanna hopes to slown down streaking Westside
>> --Anderson Independent Mail Stories
>> 
>> • Pledges have slown down a little bit and I want to make sure we haven't
>> lost the momentum that we built up last week
>> —Theater Hopper
>> 
>> • With respect to labour market dynamics employment continued to expand
>> briskly in Q1 2008, but seems to have slown down somewhat in Q2.
>> --Global Economy Matters
>> 
>> • So, that means CPM advertising may slown down but overall I still think
>> the state of Internet Advertising is healthy
>> --Cameron Olthuis
>> 
>> • Their excuse is that their super-uber-mega-military computers are being
>> "slown down" by people watching stupid videos of cats playing the piano,
>> and being exposed to viruses (I'm sorry, but if US military servers can be
>> taken down with a virus you get from surfing MySpace, then Georgie, we have
>> a fucking problem).
>> --Three good things for every (three) bad
>> 
>>> On Aug 2, 2017, at 7:56 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Fortyish woman on Cosequin commercial:
>>> 
>>> "It's amazing. He really hasn't slown down much."
>>> 
>>> JL
>>> --
>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -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

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