[Ads-l] "unclear of the concept"

[Laurence Horn]

The problem I have with Jerry's syntactic blend analysis is that if that's
the only thing going on you'd expect substitutions in both directions
equally freely, so "of" would be replaced by other prepositions as often as
vice versa: "I'm sick with you", "He's afraid at/with you". These might
occur, but with much less frequency than the substitution of the unmarked,
highest frequency preposition "of" replaces the other options, as in "bored
of" or Mark's "comfortable of".  I see this as similar to the phenomenon of
"Dative sickness" in Icelandic, another kind of leveling in which a range
of structurally unpredictable, lexically selected case markers for direct
objects, e.g. Genitive or Nominative, are increasingly being replaced by
Dative, which is the most frequent such lexically selected case marker.
(The term is also used for the spread of Dative to "quirky" subjects.)  So
what I'm claiming is that we're dealing with "of"-sickness; positing blends
doesn't make any predictions about directionality of the spread.

LH

On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 12:42 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:

> As it happens, shortly after reading this thread I saw the following in a
> mailing on a different list, in a discussion about when to hold a meeting
> and who would be willing to host it:
> >>>>>
> I do not know if my wife is comfortable with covid of any house gatherings.
> <<<<<
>
> I don't think the placement of "with covid" affects this as a case of "of"-
> spreading. I see it as modifying the whole if-clause rather than just
> "comfortable" or "((of) any) house gatherings". That is, it's equivalent to
> something like
> "if my wife is comfortable of any house gatherings, with the covid
> situation being as it is."
> Without the mention of COVID, I think it would be
> "I do not know if my wife is comfortable of any house gatherings."
>
> Mark Mandel
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022, 11:45 AM Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at mst.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > "bored of" looks like a syntactic blend (from "bored with" + "tired of").
> > Might "unclear of the concept" somehow also be a blend?
> >
> > Gerald Cohen
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 6, 2022, 10:43 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I would say it's more a case of leveling--not an eggcorn since there's
> no
> > > folk-etymological "story" the "of" would be in service to (in service
> > > of?).  It's something I've noticed over the 70+ years I've been
> observing
> > > language, the replacement of other prepositions by "of", the least
> > marked.
> > > Another example is "bored of", which for me is still "bored with". Some
> > of
> > > you will have your own examples. I've heard, and probably used,
> "unclear
> > > about the concept" as well as "on the concept", but the substitution by
> > > "of" isn't unexpected.
> > >
> > > LH
> > >
> > > On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 10:37 AM Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Here's an instance of "unclear of the concept," where in my ideolect
> > I'd
> > > > use "unclear *on* the concept."
> > > >
> > > > Eggcorn? Variant? What's the defining difference between the two? Is
> it
> > > > a reanalysis or a substitution?
> > > >
> > > >
> >
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> > > > ---Amy West
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