[Ads-l] Syntactic lend: "What crimes was he breaking?"

[Laurence Horn]

Or a possible news crawl for whenever they have something new to report on Trump:

“Breaking Crimes”

 
> On Sep 29, 2020, at 8:10 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at MST.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Two days ago on CNN the moderator asked one of his guests
> 
> about President Trump's steps to avoid taxation.  The  question
> 
> was, that if the president did such and such involving the depreciation
> 
> of his property, "what crimes was he breaking?"
> 
> I jotted it down immediately, so I'm sure of the quoted words.
> 
> Clearly this is a syntactic blend:
> 
> "What crimes was he committing?
> 
> plus
> 
> "What laws was he breaking?"
> 
> 
> Gerald Cohen
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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