[Ads-l] no "half-vast" coup d'=?UTF-8?Q?=C3=A9tat_?=definition

[Ben Zimmer]

Now on Language Log:

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=55276

On Wed, Jul 13, 2022 at 6:23 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you listen to the Bolton interview on CNN, he really did say "half
> vast." The /v/ is unmistakable.
>
>
> https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/07/12/jake-tapper-john-bolton-debate-january-6-coup-attempt-sot-lead-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
>
> Here's how the Washington Post transcribed it:
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/13/john-bolton-coup/
>
> "That’s not the way Donald Trump does things. It’s rambling from one half,
> vast idea to another, one plan that falls through and another comes up --
> that’s what he was doing."
>
> This just seems to be attempted humor on Bolton's part.
>
> --bgz
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2022 at 4:36 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Presumably the Guardian would have expected Bolton to have referred to
>> "half-arsed" ideas, if that's what he meant. I recall an argument several
>> decades ago among theoretical linguists about "The vastness of natural
>> language"--
>>
>>
>> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3277027-the-vastness-of-natural-languages
>> https://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~langendoen/McCawleyReviewOfVastness.pdf
>>
>> --to which some of us were willing to concede that natural language was
>> half-vast.
>>
>> LH
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2022 at 9:12 AM Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > John Bolton informs, in The Guardian today, that a real coup d'état must
>> > be carefully planned, as he had done in "other places." Therefore, saith
>> > he, as transcribed in The Guardian, Trump did not attempt the
>> > forementioned, given his "half-vast" ideas.
>> >
>>
>

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