[Ads-l] Intransitive "publish"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Oct 11 19:53:59 UTC 2018


Yes, the manner adverb always helps, and it can override the constraint against episodic readings.  Ditto a negation when the corresponding positive was expected or presupposed:
“No matter how sharp a knife we used, that bread just didn’t slice”.  But the “publish” case has no manner adverb or negation, doesn’t seem dispositional (property-related), and in other ways seems more like an episodic unaccusative, as in “The boat sank” or “The rice burned”.  Note that a true middle-encouraging frame like

That kind of paper won’t publish easily.

seems pretty odd (at least to me).  I wonder if intransitive (unaccusative) “publish” might have been helped along by “drop”, as in “Beyoncé’s new album just dropped” (discussed in earlier threads).  

LH

> On Oct 11, 2018, at 3:37 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:
> 
> This seems to have been sent only to Mark, so I'm re-sending it.
> 
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: 	Re: [ADS-L] Intransitive "publish"
> Date: 	Wed, 10 Oct 2018 20:11:56 -0400
> From: 	Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net>
> To: 	Mark Mandel <mark.a.mandel at GMAIL.COM>
> 
> 
> 
> Usually but not always. One source I’m reading right now is a 2016(?) monograph by Marianne Hundt, which makes a case for including these examples. Often you just need the right context; for example, “the bread looked tough, but when I slid in the knife, it sliced easily.”
> 
> Neal
> 
>> On Oct 10, 2018, at 7:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>> But doesn’t middle voice tend to involve dispositions/capacities rather than episodic or eventive clauses?  Compare standard middle examples from the literature like
>> Poetry doesn’t translate easily.
>> This bread will cut with a sharp knife.
>> Those cars are selling like hotcakes.
>> Bean curd digests easily.
>> The soup that eats like a meal.
>> ‘Mr. Howard amuses easy' (as in the eponymous paper representing earliest treatment of the construction I know of, by Anna Granville Hatcher (Modern Language Notes, 1943—a paper that also uses asterisks for ungrammatical sentences!)
>> Typically, there’s an adverb relating to *manner* (not time) and a general, non-episodic, interpretation (cf. #Mr. Howard amused last night).  In the case of “This book published last night”, we have an episodic interpretation involving a one-time event.  So I’m not sure I see it as a garden-variety middle.
>> LH
>>> https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/middle-voice-sentences
>>> Neal
>>>> On Oct 10, 2018, at 3:54 PM, Marc Sacks <msacksg at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>>> I don't think any of these examples matches the one I cited, though maybe
>>>> the 1972 entry comes close.
>>>> I read the " The newspapers do not publish on Good
>>>> Friday" example more like "The network does not broadcast after midnight."
>>>> And "This just published" is like "This just in."
>>>> I don't see "the book published last month" in quite that way. Maybe it's
>>>> middle voice, like "the book reads well"?
>>>> --Marc
>>>>> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 3:00 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>> -----------------------
>>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
>>>>> Subject:      Re: Intransitive "publish"
>>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> Intransitive "publish" is pretty common these days. OED3 breaks it down
>>>>> into two senses: 3c (of an author, as in "publish or perish") and 3d (of a
>>>>> work -- as Vox uses it). Examples for the latter sense date back to 1849:
>>>>> 1849   Times 13 Aug. 10/2 (advt.)    Amusement while travelling--Publishing
>>>>> monthly, one shilling each, the Railway Library.
>>>>> 1918   C. S. Lewis Let. 27 Oct. (1966) 45   He [sc. Heinemann] told me that
>>>>> John Galsworthy (who publishes with them) had seen my MS.
>>>>> 1928   Public Opinion 6 Apr. 325/1   The newspapers do not publish on Good
>>>>> Friday.
>>>>> 1972   Evening Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland) 24 June 1/1   The
>>>>> Evening Telegram will publish Monday, June 26 which is being observed as
>>>>> Discovery Day in Newfoundland.
>>>>> I'd say the intransitive usage has been further popularized in the age of
>>>>> online publishing. Among journalists you typically hear things like "this
>>>>> just published" (i.e., just appeared online via publishing software), or if
>>>>> you're in a hurry, "this just pubbed."
>>>>>> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:49 PM Marc Sacks <msacksg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> I just encountered this in a "Vox" article:
>>>>>> Enterprising Southern women have been trading on this platonic ideal of a
>>>>>> lifestyle forever. The latest is Reese Witherspoon, whose book *Whiskey
>>>>> in
>>>>>> a Teacup*
>>>>>> <
>>>>> https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWhiskey-Teacup-Reese-Witherspoon%2Fdp%2F1471166228
>>>>>> published last month.
>>>>>> Shouldn't that be "was published," or is it perhaps self-published? Has
>>>>> any
>>>>>> of you encountered the transitive "publish" elsewhere? It's new to me.
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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> 
> 
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