April 1-16, 1997 ---------------------- There are 15 messages totalling 359 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Query (4) 2. last call for abstracts: n/mla forum on deixis 3. 4. Help 5. final call for papers 6. m/mla abstracts 7. noozer (2) 8. Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words (2) 9. ADS session at M/MLA 10. Same Fire ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 06:32:19 -0500 From: "Joseph C. Salmons" Subject: Query A grad student in our department (Cordelia Scharpf) is starting to work on some fiction written here and abroad in German by Mathilde Franziska Anneke, an abolitionist and early feminist leader. Much of the work deals with slavery. Anneke's representation of African-American speech owes much to English literary works of the time, but contains other elements as well. Some of these are Anglicisms, some stereotypical foreign talk and so on. Can anybody recommend good recent work on the representation of African- American speech in 19th c. literature? Has anything at all been done on this topic using literature in languages other than English? Thanks, joe salmons jsalmons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]facstaff.wisc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:06:49 -0500 From: Elizabeth Gibbens Subject: Re: Query Dear Professor Salmons: I don't have a direct answer for you, but Claudia Tate in the George Washington University English Department is a good person to ask. She is a scholar of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African-American literature and serves on the editorial board of _The Journal of American Literature_. The telephone number of the GW English Dept. is (202) 994-6180. Elizabeth Gibbens At 06:32 AM 4/1/97 -0500, you wrote: >A grad student in our department (Cordelia Scharpf) is starting to work on >some fiction written here and abroad in German by Mathilde Franziska Anneke, >an abolitionist and early feminist leader. Much of the work deals with >slavery. Anneke's representation of African-American speech owes much to >English literary works of the time, but contains other elements as well. >Some of these are Anglicisms, some stereotypical foreign talk and so on. > >Can anybody recommend good recent work on the representation of African- >American speech in 19th c. literature? Has anything at all been done on >this topic using literature in languages other than English? > >Thanks, >joe salmons >jsalmons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]facstaff.wisc.edu > > Elizabeth Gibbens Research Assistant Mr. William Safire, The New York Times ----------------------------- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 09:34:39 -0600 From: "Timothy C. Frazer" Subject: Re: Query On Tue, 1 Apr 1997, Joseph C. Salmons wrote: A grad student in our department (Cordelia Scharpf) is starting to work on > some fiction written here and abroad in German by Mathilde Franziska Anneke, > an abolitionist and early feminist leader. Much of the work deals with > slavery. Anneke's representation of African-American speech owes much to > English literary works of the time, but contains other elements as well. > Some of these are Anglicisms, some stereotypical foreign talk and so on. > > Can anybody recommend good recent work on the representation of African- > American speech in 19th c. literature? Has anything at all been done on > this topic using literature in languages other than English? 1. In a recent biography of Sojourner Truth (Princeton UP), it states that many of her speech were reproduced in the press in a "mock southern" dialect, even though she spent her life in New York state and spoke Dutch as a first language. This suggests that there was a stereotype tradtion for representing VBE in lit. 2. There might be something in the history of minstrelsy. A book called "Blacking Up" has been recommended to me but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:47:45 -0500 From: "by way of BETH LEE SIMON " Subject: last call for abstracts: n/mla forum on deixis Last call to submit an abstract or proposal to participate CALL FOR ABSTRACTS/PROPOSALS STUDIES IN DEIXIS: WORKING THE MARGINS OF PRAGMATICS AND SEMANTICS for the Midwest Modern Language Association Meeting, Chicago, November 6-8, 1997, Ramada Congress Hotel Abstracts are being accepted for "Studies in Deixis: Working the Margins of Pragmatics and Semantics." The multidimensionality of deixis, a linguistic phenomenon at the heart of communication, remains one of the most intriguing aspects of human language. It is impossible to imagine communication that functions without deixis. Deictic elements such as pronouns, demonstrative adjectives, and spatial or temporal adverbs, express a user-centered perspective on time, place and person relationships in the social context of an utterance; simultaneously, they denote formal grammatical functions within an utterance. The aim of the forum is to bring together scholars working on different aspects of deixis--from formal linguistics to stylistics--to discuss the activity that occurs at the intersection of language and reality/structure and function. Publication of the proceedings is planned. Abstracts/proposals should be a maximum of 150 words in length and must be received by Friday, April 4, 1997. Send abstracts (e-mail or fax preferred) to: Beth Lee Simon Dept. of English and Linguistics Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, IN 46805 simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu fax: 219-481-6985 and/or Anna Fellegy, Department of English, 207 Lind Hall, #185, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455 felle001[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]maroon.tc.umn.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:43:21 -0500 From: "Thomas J. Creswell" Subject: -- [ From: Thomas J. Creswell * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- Help ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 11:22:01 -0500 From: "Thomas J. Creswell" Subject: Help -- [ From: Thomas J. Creswell * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- Please ignore and forgive my misposted cry for help. I am trying to track down some strayed email and meant to send the message to Listserv rather than ADS-L. tom ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 09:55:46 -0600 From: Cynthia Bernstein Subject: Re: Query A couple essays in _Language Variety in the South Revisited_ (coming out in a couple months from The University of Alabama Press) concern literary representations of AAE. In "An Early Representation of African-American English," Marianne Cooley (Univ. of Houston) discusses features of AAE represented in productions of _The Padlock_ in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Katherine Wyly Mille (U of North Carolina, Greensboro) writes about Ambrose Gonzales's Gullah. Cynthia Bernstein On Tue, 1 Apr 1997, Joseph C. Salmons wrote: > A grad student in our department (Cordelia Scharpf) is starting to work on > some fiction written here and abroad in German by Mathilde Franziska Anneke, > an abolitionist and early feminist leader. Much of the work deals with > slavery. Anneke's representation of African-American speech owes much to > English literary works of the time, but contains other elements as well. > Some of these are Anglicisms, some stereotypical foreign talk and so on. > > Can anybody recommend good recent work on the representation of African- > American speech in 19th c. literature? Has anything at all been done on > this topic using literature in languages other than English? > > Thanks, > joe salmons > jsalmons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]facstaff.wisc.edu > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 12:18:00 -0500 From: Tom Beckner Subject: final call for papers Final call for abstracts/proposals for ADS session in association with Midwest Modern Langauge Association Meeting Chicago, November 6-8, 1997 Ramada Congress Hotel Tpoic open Abstracts should be approx. 2000 words in length and must be received by April 4, 1997. E-mail preferred. Send to: tmbeckner[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tayloru.edu W. Thomas beckner, Ph.D. Taylor University--Ft. Wayne Campus 1025 West Rudisill Blvd. Ft. Wayne, IN 46807 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 13:21:13 EST From: simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Subject: m/mla abstracts I see I typed "n/mla". You know I mean "m/mla". beth simon ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 13:23:59 -0500 From: Ron Butters Subject: noozer I'm wondering if anyone knows the term NOOZER 'a child's cap' from the Shenandoah Valley? I know I should go look at my volume III of DARE before I ask, but (I blush to say) I haven't yet got around to buying my volume III of DARE. ***By the way, can I still get DARE3 at an ADS discount?*** ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 12:46:24 -0600 From: Ditra Henry Subject: Re: Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words Yesterday, in my semantics course, we got into a big discussion about whether or not there is something we can call Spanglish? There were many examples of codeswitching and why people code switch and how they do it and then the discussion went to the idea of borrowed words such as pushale, leading to the comment that many young Amercan Spanish speakers were even trying to conjugate pusha in the Spanish forms. Also, the discussion led to the idea that many young Spanish speakers use constructions in spanish that are very unfamiliar to those who come from other countries. For example, a young person born in Guatemala and raised in the US will go back to Guatemala and are told that their Spaninsh has an accent o Gutemalams say that they don't understand their Spanish. Next, I asked some young people I know. These university students that have been here or grwon up here and come from Spanish speaking households said they start to use the vocabulary of the people that come from the different spanish speaking countries when they are addressing them and so forth. So I believe that there is a dialect of Spanish that can be described as Spanglish. what are others findings on this? Ditra Henry Northeastern Illinois University Chicago ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 13:13:20 -0600 From: Dennis Baron Subject: Re: Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words I haven't got them here, but last week there was an op-ed piece and two letters in the NY Times on the question of Spanglish. You can probably retrieve them from the NYTimes web site, which I believe is www.nytimes.com. Dennis > Yesterday, in my semantics course, we got into a big discussion about >whether or not there is something we can call Spanglish? There were many >examples of codeswitching and why people code switch and how they do it >and then >the discussion went to the idea of borrowed words such as pushale, leading >to the comment that many young Amercan Spanish speakers were even trying >to conjugate pusha in the Spanish forms. Also, the discussion led to the >idea that many young Spanish speakers use constructions in spanish that >are very unfamiliar to those who come from other countries. For example, > a young person born in Guatemala and raised in the US will go >back to Guatemala and are told that their Spaninsh has an accent o >Gutemalams say that they don't understand their Spanish. > Next, I asked some young people I know. >These university students that have been here or grwon up here and come >from Spanish speaking households said they start to use the >vocabulary of the people that come from the different spanish speaking >countries when they are addressing them and so forth. So I believe that >there is a dialect of Spanish that can be described as Spanglish. what >are others findings on this? > >Ditra Henry >Northeastern Illinois University >Chicago Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu Department of English office: 217-333-2392 University of Illinois fax: 217-333-4321 608 South Wright Street home: 217-384-1683 Urbana, Illinois 61801 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baron ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 14:37:26 -0500 From: Tom Beckner Subject: ADS session at M/MLA Sorry-- abstracts of 200 words (not 2000) would be appropriate. Thanks for spotting the error Beth! Tom Beckner ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 16:19:49 -0600 From: Joan Houston Hall Subject: Re: noozer DARE seems to have missed "noozer." Ron, if you'll tell me more, I'll put it in the file for an updated edition. The coupon on the back of your September 1996 issue of NADS offers 20% off Volumes I, II, and/or III of DARE, and it's good through June 30, 1997. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 17:40:43 -0500 From: Grant Barrett Subject: Same Fire Someone from Coshocton, Ohio, just started working here. She told me the story: A woman was accused of spreading gossip by her neighbor. The woman said she did not have a thing to do with starting it, but had heard about it, and may have passed it on. The neighbor said, "That's the same fire." Never heard "that's the same fire" (fahr). Anybody? Grant Barrett gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 31 Mar 1997 to 1 Apr 1997 *********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 1 Apr 1997 to 2 Apr 1997 There are 7 messages totalling 214 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words 2. MARCH MADNESS #3: The Al McGuire Glossary 3. Cyber slang 4. For to .... (3) 5. For to... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 11:12:32 -0600 From: Dennis Baron Subject: Re: Spanglish,Codeswitching,or borrowed words I realized today that not all the NY Times Spanglish discussion is available on its website. Here are the relevant articles and dates, so far (the Echevarria piece is on the web as of today): 3/25/97 pp. A1; A14 Lizette Alvarez, "It's the talk of Nueva York: The hybrid called Spanglish." 3/28/97 p. A19, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria (Yale Spanish Prof), "Is 'Spanglish' a language?" 3/29/97 p. 18, 2 letters 3/31/97 p. A10, 2 letters 4/1/97 1 letter I've also found a number of interesting sites by doing a keyword search for "Spanglish" on Netscape. Dennis __ Dennis Baron debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu Department of English office: 217-333-2392 University of Illinois fax: 217-333-4321 608 South Wright Street home: 217-384-1683 Urbana, Illinois 61801 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baron ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 14:25:24 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: MARCH MADNESS #3: The Al McGuire Glossary In connection with the following, it's worth noting that many of these ARE used by other announcers today. A couple of impressionistic comments follow. I don't mean to impugn Al McGuire or his influence, just to note that at least of these are more widespread in their distribution. ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This is from The Sporting News, 29 March 1980, pg. 12, col. 3. Few of the terms are used today by other announcers: (...) With the NCAA tournament coming to a climax in Indianapolis, it's time to bone up on some Al McGuireisms: AIRCRAFT CARRIER: The ultimate big man--a franchise maker. BELLY: The weaknesses on the other team. CHECKERBOARD: Black/white situation. CUPCAKE: A team that comes down from North Dakota and plays with snowshoes. CURTAIN TIME: Pick up the hymn books, it's all over. DANCE-HALL PLAYER: A fella that thinks he can score more than 2 points at once. [Note: not a hard feat now, in the day of the three-point shot! LH] DYNAMITE: Out of sight. Top shelf. DUNKIRK: A blowout, that's all she wrote. EAST CUPCAKE: An easy opponent; A chance to play reserves. FRENCH PASTRY: Hollywood, going for Oscar, performing unnecessarily. A KEEPER: Quality player, good to be around; Bo Derek. LAST MASS AT SUMMER RESORT: Lightning fast. MERRY-GO-ROUND: Yellow ribbons and winning tourneys. NOSE-BLEEDER: A guy who can sky; a super rebounder. OUT-OF-THE-GATE: The first three minutes; sets the norm of the game. PARK AVENUE: Top shelf, the ultimate in class. PUSH: Even; a cliffhanger. QUICK WHISTLE: High school whistle. SEASHELLS AND BALLOONS: Pleasing, desirable. SLOW WHISTLE: NBA whistle; refs blow it slower. TAP CITY: It's all over; Auerbach's cigar! [If I'm not mistaken, an extension of a term from table stakes poker. LH] TENTH AVENUE ROUGH: West Side Story; a physical game. THREE O'CLOCK SHOOTER: Great practice player, zero in game. THOROUGHBRED: God given athlete or a Final Four team. UPTICK: Team that hasn't reached full potential. WHISTLE BLOWER: With three officials, the third official. WHITE KNUCKLER: Dow to the wire. ---------------------------------------- Some of these have been around forever. "White knuckler", "thoroughbred" (for the "blue chipper" or "can't-miss prospect"), and "push", inter no doubt alia, are not limited to basketball contexts. The last comes from gamblers' lingo: a push (or toss-up) is one in which neither team is favored; it's also a game bet against the spread which you neither win nor lose because the outcome was exactly on the spread (e.g. one team winning by 3). On the whistles, it's worth noting that the metaphor extends further: not only are there slow whistles (ones the refs choose not to blow regardless of the physical nature of the combat--good recent example was the semi-finals of the women's tourna- ment last week between Stanford and Old Dominion)--and fast whistles (ones the refs are all too willing to blow, resulting in "shadow fouls"). There's also what happens in the last minute of a game (hockey or basketball) or in overtime when officials reluctant to alter the outcome of a game are said to "swallow their whistles". Makes 'em hard to blow. I'm waiting for its extension to football, where the official would have to swallow his flag. Larry ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 22:07:36 -0100 From: Mike FOX-ecki Subject: Re: Cyber slang Hi! I'm sorry to tell you that I have nothing so far for the topic but the fact is that I'm in need too. I'm attempting to gather materials for my thesis (Interdisciplinary study of the Language of the Internet on the basis of the selected services) in which I would like to concentrate mainly on the structure of the language on IRC (morphology, syntax, and pragmatics perhaps). There are no materials available here where I live (Poland) for the topic is completely new (to tell you the truth, it seems nobody has ever done that !) so I'm hoping to get all the data and bibliography over the internet. I've invested my whole savings into it and I must tell you that here in Poland communication is very expensive (esp. for a part time working student like me). Anyway, should I find anyting on your topic I will let you know for I'll surely be browsing through the pages which are quite similar to that topic of yours. All the same, I'd like to ask you to post my call to anybody who might know anything about this and I will do the same. Any results will be posted at my home page which presently is under construction but do visit it some time later. You surely know the Jargon File, but I am putting the url here just in case . This is the HTML version but you can also get it in TXT. You could also take a look at . I don't know if it's relevant to you. There's also a nice list of conferences and seminars. Who knows one of those could be for you :) I think there's a wealth of information on your topic. I'm sure you'll find something if you do a simple search on the Yahoo or Altavista. Wishing you (and myself) good luck with the search PS: Should you like to know more mail me. tafn mike -- ======================================================____ ___ _ _ Mike FOX-ecki //__ // // \\// tel. no (048)(32) 1703278 // // // /\\ HomePage // //__// // \\ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 20:14:30 -0600 From: Ditra Henry Subject: Re: For to .... I've heard this construction among many African Americans in the Chicago area and I'm wondering if this is an AAVE construction or hypercorrection or is it just a Southern construction? examples: May I use your phone? Why do you need to use the phone? for to call my insurance company for a question. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 21:18:22 -0500 From: "Bethany K. Dumas" Subject: Re: For to .... On Wed, 2 Apr 1997, Ditra Henry wrote: > I've heard this construction among many African Americans in the > Chicago area and I'm wondering if this is an AAVE construction or > hypercorrection or is it just a Southern construction? > examples: May I use your phone? > Why do you need to use the phone? > for to call my insurance company for a question. There's a note on the construction in one of the old t-g textbooks, maybe Jacobs & Rosenbaum, if memory serves me as well as I think it does. Think also of the spiritual that contains the words, "Coming for to carry me home." I think it is an older, possibly Southern pattern. Bethany Bethany K. Dumas, J.D., Ph.D. Applied Linguistics, Language & Law Department of English EMAIL: dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu 415 McClung Tower (423) 974-6965, (423) 974-6926 (FAX) University of Tennessee Editor, Language in the Judicial Process Knoxville, TN 37996-0430 USA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 21:35:37 -0500 From: Peggy Smith Subject: Re: For to .... How old is the folk song, "Polly Wolly Doodle"? ("Oh I went down south for to see my Sal, Singin' Polly Wolly Doodle all the day...") the expression's been around at least that long. As far as it belonging strictly to AAVE, I think the song has a verse about blonde hair and blue eyes- but I could be mistaken. It's been awhile... Peggy Smith ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 21:07:32 -0600 From: Ditra Henry Subject: Re: For to... Yes the Swing low song I realize had that construction but the Polly wolly doodle all day I didn't realize. However, are there any current examples that any knows of ? I just heard this from a student yesterday who was born and raised in Chicago's inner city. ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 1 Apr 1997 to 2 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 2 Apr 1997 to 3 Apr 1997 There are 14 messages totalling 392 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Melting Pot (2) 2. "Color Line" (part one--1874/75 NY Herald) 3. for to 4. Old News? 5. "for to" 6. Comput-TV 7. 8. For-To again 9. linguist Ebonics archive (2) 10. For to... 11. for-to (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 02:19:30 -0500 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Melting Pot There was a huge lineup outside of where I worked at Chambers Street in Manhattan the other week. The marriage bureau was next door; I joked to colleagues that I got on the wrong lunch line and got married by mistake. "I just ordered rice, and look what happened!" Which brings us to "melting pot." The Miner/Rawson American Heritage Dictionary of American Quotations has, on pg. 21, quote 3, the familiar passage from Israel Zangwill's THE MELTING POT: America is God's crucible, the great melting pot, where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming...Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians--into the crucible with you all! God is making the American! Zangwill did not invent this. See the cartoon in Puck, Vol. XXV, no. 693, 3 July 1889 (I forgot the page). The caption is: THE MORTAR OF ASSIMILATION--AND THE ONE ELEMENT THAT WON'T MIX. The mortar bears the word "CITIZENSHIP." An anarchist leaps out with a bloody knife. Miss America/Miss Liberty is stirring the mortar with a spoon that reads "EQUAL RIGHTS." The Mortar of Assimilation pre-dates The Melting Pot by about twenty years. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ "For To" in "Oh, Susanna!" I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee And I'm goin' to Louisiana, my true love for to see Oh, Susanna! Now don't you cry for me.... O. K. I'll cry for Madonna. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 03:30:47 -0500 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: "Color Line" (part one--1874/75 NY Herald) The celebrations have begun for the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's "color line." Unfortunately, no one exactly knows what "color line" means! JUBA TO JIVE by Clarence Major and BLACK TALK by Geneva Smitherman both have "color scale," but no "color line." Huh? What?? No "color line"?? The Miner/Rawson American Heritage Dictionary of American Quotations has these on 419:6 and 421:2: In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line. ---FREDERICK DOUGLASS, speech, Convention of Colored Men, Louisville, Ky., Sept. 24, 1883 The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. --W. E. B. DU BOIS, _To The Nations of the World_, speech, Pan-African conference, London, 1900 OED has: COLOUR-LINE (a) on seals or engravings, fine parallel lines indicating colour or tincture (b) esp. in U.S., the line of demarcation between the coloured and the white race. 1878 _N. Amer. Rev._ CXXVII 491 We shall soon cease to hear of a *color-line. That's the only citation! Stuart Berg Flexner's I Hear America Talking has this on page 54: _Color line_, 1875, the social distinction between Blacks and Whites, a Reconstruction term; _to draw the color line_, 1875; _to cross the color line_, 1880s. The following are from the New York Herald. (The other stuff I have are too much for this posting, and may follow later.) 11 September 1874, NY Herald, pg. 4, cols. 4-5. RELATIONS OF THE RACES./The Attempt to Get Rid of Negro Voters by Exile./ "THE COLOR LINE."/Tactics of the Whites to Intimidate the Blacks./CAUSES OF THE MASSACRES./Prejudice and Ignorance of the Southern Young Men./ATTITUDE OF THE FREEDMEN. (...) FIGHTING ON THE COLOR LINE. It is a peculiarity of the democracy of this section that they claim to be fighting their political battles "on the color line." The phrase is peculiar, but it is full of meaning, or like most phrases of the kind it betrays a purpose, An eminent Tennessee politician, who is not a radical, told me that he objects to acting with the democratic party because it is organized on the color line. Mr. Hewitt, the democratic candidate for Congress from this district, was nominated because he stands squarely on the color line. The phrase is often heard in the mouths of politicians, and it appears as a "catchword" in the newspapers. Its significance is not to be overlooked, especially at a time like this, when there is talk of a war of races in the South. Like the famous cross-bones and skull, it is a warning to those whom it most concerns and it is likely to prove most damaging by whom it was invented. But its full meaning is not conveyed to the mind by the words themselves. Anybody can see that it implies the organization of political parties on the basis of color, but it means more than this; its full significance is that the whites are to be forced on the one side and that even the negroes are to vote the other way at their peril. 5 June 1875, NY Herald. pg. 5, cols. 1-3. MISSISSIPPI./Political Factions in the State./FOLLY OF THE DEMOCRATS./Extremists and Corruptionists on Both Sides., by Charles Nordhoff. (...) THE COLOR LINE. It is a complaint, also, of the democrats, that thei opponents have, for corrupt purposes, maintained the color line in position. It is true that the Ames men cultivate the negro vote by base means; but it is also true that the democrats help them. 10 June 1875, NY Herald, pg. 4, cols. 4-5. MISSISSIPPI./The Partisan Bitterness Shown by Both Parties./The Negro as a Voter and a Citizen./ELECTION FRAUDS AND INTIMIDATION./Peace and Good Governemtn Necessary to Posperity., by Charles Nordhoff. (...)After the election a private circular was sent around to leading democratic business men, of which also I send you an original:-- (For Private Use.) "Stand to your colors." "Hew to the line." (...) OBJECT OF THE "WHITE LINERS." The main object of the "White Liners" is to demoralize the negro vote by depriving it, so far as possible, of white organizers. 19 June 1875, NY Herald, pg. 4, cols. 5-6. MISGOVERNMENT./The New Order of Things Accepted in the South./THE COLOR LINE DANGEROUS/Maintained by Continual Federal Interference., by Charles Nordhoff. (...) THE COLOR LINE A CALAMITY 5. The division of political parties on the race or color line has been a great calamity to the Southern States. It had its origin in the refusal of the Southern whites, after the war, to recognize the equal political rights of the blacks and their attempts, in state Legislatures, to pass laws hostile to them. This folly has been bitterly regretted by the wiser men in the South. A mississippian said to me,"It was a great blunder. We could have better afforded to educate and train the colored people and fit them for the duties of citizenship than to have them alienated from us." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 06:51:01 -0500 From: Peggy Smith Subject: Re: Melting Pot Barry, The Melting Pot Theory dates to 1782 and the essay, "Letters from an American Farmer" by Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur. In it, he says, "Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day gause great changes in the world..." Peggy Smith ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 08:43:19 +0000 From: "E.W. Gilman" Subject: for to I guess the point of an email list is to never have to look in books. For to_ is in W3, and for historical background see DARE II_ for_ prep. B1b (from 1795) and OED prep. 11 (includes George Washington and Abigail Adams. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 10:12:23 -0500 From: Wayne Glowka Subject: Old News? The associate vice president for things like retention and academic support programs has mailed me an advertisement for the following book: Parker, Henry H.(Ph.D.; University of Tennessee, Martin; "a 25-year veteran teacher of Ebonics from the pre-school level to his present classes at his university") Ebonics: Teaching Minorities to Play the Corporate Language Game. [1997?] Columbia: National Resource Center for The Freshman Year Experience and Students in Transition, University of South Carolina. $15 plus shipping charges. Phone: 803-777-6029 Fax: 803-777-4699 E-mail: ninal[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]rcce.sc.edu Wayne Glowka ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 13:37:38 -0500 From: Mark Mandel Subject: "for to" I recall a song I learned from a Weavers record in the fifties, sounding like white US folk-song tradition of (at a guess) not earlier than 1850 at earliest, and maybe any time since then. Every verse ended with "I come for to sing", which was also the title. One verse ran: Some folks enjoy me, others do not. Some love to EX-tol on what I ain't got. Me, I don't mind, it don't mean a thing. But as for me, I come for to sing. Of course, songs in this tradition constantly borrow from each other, so the construction might have been archaic in the *speech* of the author. Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/ Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 14:53:29 -0500 From: Wayne Glowka Subject: Comput-TV Would anyone who has seen WAX care to hazard a guess at what "compu-TV" might actually mean in the following quotation? Does it refer to the kinds of visual effects that make Toy Story a daily hit at my house? 1995 Sep/Oct Bloomsbury Review 14/1 Taking many forms, the Avant-Pop surfaces in everything from William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (Ace, 1984), which merges unusual techniques (surreal images, info-dense sentences, the introduction of astounding vocabularies) with conventional genre science fiction conceits, to David Blair's cult film WAX, or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991), a disruptive seriocomic narrative short with a compu-TV vision about cross-sexual reincarnation and the Gulf War told by Mesopotamian bees (which turn out to be the souls of the dead). Wayne Glowka Professor of English Director of Research and Graduate Student Services Coordinator of Graduate Studies in English Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA 31061 912-453-4222 FAX: 912-453-5961 Office: Arts & Sciences 3-04 wglowka[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mail.gac.peachnet.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 14:55:12 EST From: Michael Montgomery Subject: The "for to" infinitive is recessive in Appalachian English but not obso- lete. In my _Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English_ there are 8-10 cita- tions, as I recall, including some from the 1970s. In the British Isles the construction is well known in Ulster, and I suspect a glance at the _English Dialect Dictionary_ would indicate a fairly widespread distribu- tion in England. There is no strong reason, in other words, for calling it an AAVE construction. Michael Montogmery Department of English University of South Carolina Columbia SC 29208 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 16:08:28 -0500 From: "Peter L. Patrick" Subject: For-To again I'm not sure what the original interest in these was-- location of "for to" constructions regionally or ethnically, I suppose, for which E. W. Gilman is certainly right to point us to DARE and other published sources. But as I hazily recall my syntax courses of a decade ago, the non-acceptability of "for to" (or "for __ to", as they would have it) constructions in standard English was important evidence motivating the distinction between S and S' complement clauses, and restrictions on the occurrence of "big PRO". (This was in the days of Chomsky and Lasnik '77 and filter theory, and I have no idea what the current view is.) So far as I know, though Chomskyan syntax recognized that "for to" occurred in non-standard dialects, the consequences of these dialects for the organization of grammar were not explored. More to the point of this list, I don't know of a source for exploring the regional distribution of such syntactic constructions in a systematic way-- a syntactic atlas of English dialects. Those with dictionary entries can be traced through dictionaries, but what does one do with more abstract items? Any suggestions? Sure there are a few articles here and there, and Trudgill edited a book on regional syntax a few years ago; and I've heard of an Italian syntactic atlas, I believe; but what about our own much-examined language? Has the opposition between traditional dialectology and generative syntax prevented the emergence of such reference works? --plp ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 16:18:52 EST From: simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Subject: linguist Ebonics archive Is there an archive / collection of the posting on Ebonics at the Linguist site? Is anyone on now who knows how to get there? send to "listserv[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tamvm1.tamu.edu" yes? what's the message line? If you know of a good site elsewhere, would you give me the address? A couple of my students thank you. beth simon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 16:24:57 -0500 From: "Jeutonne P. Brewer" Subject: Re: For to... How about I'm going to London for to see the queen? ********************************************** Jeutonne P. Brewer, Associate Professor Department of English University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC 27412 email: jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hamlet.uncg.edu URL: http://www.uncg.edu/~jpbrewer *********************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 16:05:25 -0600 From: wachal robert s Subject: for-to The "for--to" construction was standard Englsih at one time, probably inn the early Modern period. Bob Wachal ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 17:27:01 -0500 From: Brenda Lester Subject: for-to There is the folk song: "I'm goin' to Louisiana for to see my Susianna, singin' polly-woodle doodle all the day." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 12:57:22 +0900 From: Daniel Long Subject: Re: linguist Ebonics archive Linganth Listserv Home Page at: http://www.beta-tech.com/linganth/ has page of "Ebonics in the Oakland School District" at: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jmw22/ebind.html simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU wrote: > Is there an archive / collection of the posting on Ebonics at the > Linguist site? Is anyone on now who knows how to get there? > > send to "listserv[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]tamvm1.tamu.edu" > yes? > what's the message line? > > If you know of a good site elsewhere, would you give me the > address? A couple of my students thank you. > > beth simon -- (Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor Japanese Language Research Center Osaka Shoin Women's College 4-2-26 Hishiyanishi Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577 tel and fax +81-6-729-1831 email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 2 Apr 1997 to 3 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 3 Apr 1997 to 4 Apr 1997 There are 5 messages totalling 144 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. For A. Rosa: dialect poem 2. Fred Cassidy 3. for-to (2) 4. Rule of Thumb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 10:00:30 EST From: simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Subject: For A. Rosa: dialect poem THis isn't the poem I mentioned. That's coming. But here's another which I love and might be suitable for you. AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Max Garland _The Postal Confessions_ University of Massachusetts Press: 1995) Sometimes I wake up with my hillbilly voice. I don't know why. Maybe a dream took me back. The catalpas wilting in the heat. The dust-devils walking the dry field. Maybe the river was trying to shine through the silt and accumulated years. But when my head cleared and sleep ended, there was only the twang of home left over, like stubble in a milo field. Sometimes I wake with the voice of my mother, every syllable stretched like sorghum or cold honey. The vowels washing over the consonants without mercy. Every word elongated, drenched in deliberation. The name of my sister for instance, *Pam,* becomes *Pay-yum;* takes two syllables, one to release the word, the other to call her back again. Or sometimes I wake with my schooled tongue. The tongue that moved away. All the *i's* and *y's* precisely spoken, buttoned in their uniforms, the cap brims set at the proper angles of ambition. A voice clipped and regulated, rising and falling like the boots of a mercenary, drawn deeper and deeper into the provinces, hunting the stragglers of childhood down. ******** (the asterisks are meant to represent italics) Max is from Kentucky. This collection, _The Postal Confessions_, won the Juniper Prize from U of Mass Press. beth simon assistant professor, linguistics and english indiana university purdue university simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu (this was fair use, right?) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 12:55:30 -0600 From: Joan Houston Hall Subject: Re: Fred Cassidy Fred Cassidy was back at the DARE office yesterday after more than four months in captivity! He gets around well with a walker. My guess is that, before very long, he will fling it away. He appreciates all the cards and letters he received, and looks forward to seeing all of you who can come to the meeting of the Dictionary Society in North America in Madison in May. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 14:13:14 -0500 From: Ron Butters Subject: Re: for-to >The "for--to" construction was >standard Englsih at one time, probably >inn [sic] the early Modern period. >Bob Wachal Yeah, check the King James Bible PS to Bob: too much room in the "in" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 15:16:27 -0500 From: Beverly Flanigan Subject: Re: for-to Like Bethany, I remember the for-to infinitive analysis from Jacobs and Rosenbaum: the Equi-NP drops out of the S', and then the 'for' complementizer is deleted--in modern _standard_ English, but not necessarily in "nonstandard" dialects or in creoles. I recall, more vaguely, Bickerton's analysis of the fi/tu complementizer in Guyanese Creole, and I'm aware that 'for' is kept and 'to' is deleted in (many?) English creoles. An interesting sidenote: When I was in high school a new student moved up to Minnesota from South Carolina (I believe), and I was struck by her use of 'for,' as in "I want for go," "He likes for play." She was a white German-surnamed farm girl, and I wondered (but never asked) where she got that construction--maybe from Black or Gullah-speaking friends? Or is the form used by others in the South? Perhaps that experience was the genesis of my interest in linguistics! Peter Patrick asked about mapping syntactic variation in dialects. A few of us are indeed beginning to do that, believing that lexical and phonological mappings are not enough. My students and I are working on Ohio, and others on this list are doing other areas. I suspect we're all willing to share! Beverly Flanigan ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:48:38 -0600 From: jack haines Subject: Rule of Thumb Does anybody know where the expression "Rule of Thumb" comes from? I was talking with a Math Professor who was telling me about an article he had just read. The author of the article stated that Rule of Thumb is a sexist/insensitive phrase because it refers to an old law that said it is alright to beat your wife, so long as the diameter of the rod used is no greater than that of your thumb. I have heard that etymology (is this etymology or is it etiology?) before, but I've never really investigated it. The guy suspects "folk etymology" (eti/ym-whatever) to be afoot. I can't say that I disagree with him. I dont want to cast aspersions but it seems unlikely that a person who would beat another person would take the time to measure the diameter of their weapon. Ya' know, just to make sure that everything was fair and square. I understand the flip side of the issue-- it gives the courts something to measure against but as a law it seems kind of subjective or open to a lot of variation. Let us suppose that the wife-beating etymology is true. What do we, as speakers of a language, do with phrases or colloquialisms that might have dark pasts? Do we kick them out of the language and change the locks? Do we kick out every one of them, or just the ones that offend my sensibilities? Any suggestions or comments? Jack Haines Northern Illinois University Graduate Student ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 3 Apr 1997 to 4 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 5 Apr 1997 to 6 Apr 1997 There are 3 messages totalling 256 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. SLANG FOR A SATURDAY: Hale-Bopponics 101 2. Rule of Thumb 3. "Color Line" (part three--1874-75 Jackson, MS newspaper) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 00:21:15 -0500 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: SLANG FOR A SATURDAY: Hale-Bopponics 101 This is from the Sunday, April 6th New York Post, page 39. What? How could I have tomorrow's New York Post on "Slang for a Saturday"? Well, I was setting my clock ahead, and then I was walking over the international date line.... HALE-BOPPONICS 101: Out of the blue and into the Reel Time dictionary By Lucinda Rosenfeld LEVEL ABOVE HUMAN adj. phrase; awesome; stupendous; beyond wordly expectations. Example: new Cheech and Chong movie wasn't just great, it was a level above human." See also Next Level. BORROWED HUMAN CONTAINER n. phrase; the human body or form. Example: "Cindy Crawford has one of the best borrowed human containers around." DISCONNECT v.; to leave one physical or mental state for another. Example: "At what time are you disconnecting from work for the Hamptons?" LUCIFERIAN n.; a jerk, especially one that seeks control over others' destinies. Example: "My boyfriend is being a total Luciferian about the house share; he won't even let my sister come out!" EARTHLY TASK n. phrase; a job or professional capacity. Example: "My boss is such a witch I'm thinking of looking for a new earthly task." E.T.P.I. n. phrase; short for an "extra terrestrial presently incarnate." Someone who seems mentally tuned out; a space cadet. Example: "I'm such an E.T.P.I. I left my keys in the car for the second day in a row!" THE TWO n. phrase; a couple who buttresses one another's anti-social behavior; two friends who bring out the worst in each other. Example: "Jeff and Jennifer are like The Two when it comes to heroin." BO AND PEEP n. phrase; any romantic coupling which shows signs of being short-lived. Example: "As far as I can tell, Jim and Sally are just a Bo and Peep. I don't even think they like each other." See Do and Ti. OLDER MEMBER n. phrase; someone who passes judgment. Example: "I wasn't looking for an Older Member, thank you. I just want a sympathetic ear!" EAT THE APPLE SAUCE v. phrase; to take one's own life. Example: "Danny was manic-depressive, but he knew that he could never go so far as eating the applesauce." KINGDOM OF GOD n. phrase; home; any place one is in the habit of returning to. Example: "You know how Mom is. She'll flip if I don't spend the holiday at the Kingdom of God!" PUT ON THE BLACK SNEAKERS n. phrase; to prepare for a long rest. Example: "I'm thinking of going home and putting on the black sneakers; I hardly slept last night." HIDE BEHIND THE COMET n. phrase; to deceive one's self. Example: "Al was really hiding behind the comet when it came to his wife's infidelity." Two entries say "See also Next Level" (LEVEL ABOVE HUMAN) and "See Do and Ti" (BO AND PEEP). Hey, NY Post! WHERE ARE THEY?? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 09:08:55 -0400 From: Alan Baragona Subject: Re: Rule of Thumb I've never believed this etymology, and I think your objections are sound. The other source I've heard most often is sewing: you can estimate a yard by stretching cloth over your extended arm and measuring from thumb to shoulder. I don't know if this is any more convincing, but it is certainly a more likely explanation than the thickness of a rod. As for your final question, I think unless there is something in the surface form of a word or phrase that still suggests a "dark" etymology, the usage has no psychological significance for the users and is harmless. If, however, its current associations are disturbing or potentially offensive, I'd be personally reluctant to use it, though I don't believe in "legislating" the language of others. Alan B. At 04:48 PM 4/4/97 -0600, jack haines wrote: >Does anybody know where the expression "Rule of Thumb" comes from? I was >talking with a Math Professor who was telling me about an article he had >just read. The author of the article stated that Rule of Thumb is a >sexist/insensitive phrase because it refers to an old law that said it is >alright to beat your wife, so long as the diameter of the rod used is no >greater than that of your thumb. I have heard that etymology (is this >etymology or is it etiology?) before, but I've never really investigated it. > >The guy suspects "folk etymology" (eti/ym-whatever) to be afoot. I can't >say that I disagree with him. I dont want to cast aspersions but it seems >unlikely that a person who would beat another person would take the time to >measure the diameter of their weapon. Ya' know, just to make sure that >everything was fair and square. I understand the flip side of the issue-- >it gives the courts something to measure against but as a law it seems kind >of subjective or open to a lot of variation. > >Let us suppose that the wife-beating etymology is true. What do we, as >speakers of a language, do with phrases or colloquialisms that might have >dark pasts? Do we kick them out of the language and change the locks? Do we >kick out every one of them, or just the ones that offend my sensibilities? > >Any suggestions or comments? > >Jack Haines >Northern Illinois University >Graduate Student > Alan Baragona alan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vmi.edu You know, years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be . . ."--she always called me 'Elwood'--"In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me. Elwood P. Dowd ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 15:11:34 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: "Color Line" (part three--1874-75 Jackson, MS newspaper) It'll be at least another week before I can check the New Orleans Picayune, Richmond Courier, and Atlanta Constitution in the Columbia University library. The Library of Congress had The Weekly Clarion of Jackson, Mississippi from the middle of 1874, and "color line" is all over the place. It's certainly the "soccer mom" WOTY of 1874-75, and Allan Metcalf and David Barnhart should include it in their upcoming book. "Mr. Nordhoff's Letters" to the New York Herald were mentioned by The Weekly Clarion on 30 June 1875, pg. 2, col. 3 and reprinted that day and other days; this was the subject of the previously posted "Color Line--part one." The following are all from the WEEKLY CLARION of Jackson, Mississippi. 13 August 1874, pg. 2, col. 2, "What the Vicksburg Election Teaches." (...) The election has taught these same arrogant leaders the old lesson, that "pride goes before a fall." Protesting heretofore against the "color line," it was plainly to be seen by the complexion of their ticket that they had themselves drawn it in their own party. (...) A "White Line" paper is needed very much in Jackson, and some enterprising man of brains and experience in the profession, could do well by investing there. (...) Apropos ofthe "color line" as a political slogan, the Vicksburger is mistaken in intimating that we have ever advocated it. We had supposed our past course for which we have been no litle censured, had always proved the reverse. We have deprecated it from the very beginning of Reconstruction, as our readers well know.... 27 August 1874, pg. 1, col. 6. The Color Line. >From the Central Star. (...) As grave as are the evils that afflict the body politic we feel assured that they will be aggravated rather than diminished by the organization of parties "on the color line." 27 August 1874, pg. 2, col. 2. The Question of the "Color Line." (...) A white man's league to deprive the colored man of the enjoyment of the privileges ofthe government is as repgnant to this fundamental doctrine of popular government, as the Native American league which was formed some years ago to proscribe foreigners and Catholics. One is the "color line"--the other was the "Native American line." 3 September 1874, pg. 3, col. 2. THE COLOR LINE. A Strong Protest Against It. >From the Coplahan. MESSRS. EDITORS: The most of the COnservative papers, including yours, which fall under my eyes, are now advocating the formation of White Leagues and the adoption of the "Color Line." (...) 10 September 1874, pg. 2, col. 6. Words in Season. >From the Holly Springs Reporter. In the excited State of the public mind caused by the unexpected presentation of the "Color Line" question for discussion, we earnestly urge all people to exercise prudence, good judgment, and a conservative course. (...) 10 September 1874, pg. 2, col. 6. Card from Ex-Gov. Brown. EDITORS OF THE CLARION.--In a brief paragraph in your last week's issue, you credit me with having caused the abandonment of a purpose to establish a "Color Line League" in this neighborhood. You do me honors over much. I do not think there has ever been a disposition among my neighbors to establish such a "line." We are getting along very well, and all we ask of the outside world is to let us alone. (...) I have been outspoken from the beginning against the "White League," otherwise called the "color line." (...) A. G. Brown. 10 September 1874, pg. 2, col. 2. The New Departure. (...) The Color Line, as do all conflicts of race, stirs the passions of the human heart to its profoundest depths. 19 November 1874, pg. 2, col. 2. "The Color Line." (argument with the Pascagoula Star--ed.) 28 January 1875, pg. 2, col. 3. Drawing the Color Line. Professing to depreciate the color line, Gov. Ames has done all that his ingenuity is capable of originating to create it. (...) 18 February 1875, pg. 2, col. 8. THE COLOR LINE. (...) We can state to the (Summit) Times that we have labored too earnestly to prevent the division of parties in this State on the "color line," ..... 25 February 1875, pg. 1, col. 8. Forcing the Color Line. >From the N. O. Picayune. The Radicals in charge of our public schools seem determined upon pushing the matter of color, when they know full well that even in the civil rights bill which is now before Congress the clause about the schools have been eliminated. (...) 26 May 1875, pg. 2., col. 2. The Color Line. (...) We are opposed to the color line as an original proposition. (...) 1 September 1875, pg. 2, col. 3. The Color Line. ...not because he is qualified or will be of the least service to that District or to any human being in it--but because he is a colored man. This is what did it, and the white Radicals are now seeingand confessing who it is that are drawing the color line. 8 September 1875, pg. 2, col. 7. The Times and the Black Line. 29 March 1876, pg. 1., col. 3. White Line Outrages. SUMMARY: "Color line" is all over the place. It's in numerous headlines from 1874-1876. The pathetic OED citation of 1878 completely ignores U.S. history--such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the civil rights amendments to the Constitution. The Dictionary of Americanisms, with only one citation in 1875 before a jump to 1878, is little better. These brief postings will hopefully result in an accurate treatment of "color line" and its importance in American history. ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 5 Apr 1997 to 6 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 6 Apr 1997 to 7 Apr 1997 Content-Length: 14957 There are 14 messages totalling 422 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Color "Bar"/Color "Barrier"/Color "Line" 2. tipping (3) 3. Rule of Thumb 4. Re[2]: Rule of Thumb 5. Not exactly double modals (2) 6. cracker and white trash 7. used to could (3) 8. cracker and white trash -Reply 9. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 00:00:27 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Color "Bar"/Color "Barrier"/Color "Line" Imagine "crossing the color line," and then finding out fifty years later that you "broke the color barrier." BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER is a 1952 film from the late, great David Lean. "Breaking barriers" took off in the 1950s, although it has not completely replaced "color line." A check of Eureka's Newspaper Abstracts shows 8 "color bar," 36 "color barrier," and 61 "color line" headlines. A "color bar" might be "hurdled." A "color barrier" was usually "broken." A "color line" was often "crossed." Like the sound barrier, the color line was often "broken" was well--probably by running faster than you can say "Jack Robinson." COLOR BAR (8) hurdle--1 belies--1 add up to end of--1 falls--1 in--2 break--2 COLOR BARRIER (36) break--19 erects--1 face--1 erased--1 recedes--1 in news--1 eliminate--1 no--1 cross--1 imprisoned--1 memories from--1 wage battles against--1 breaches--1 broadens--1 seeing beyond--1 sliding past--1 comes tumbling down--1 strides past--1 COLOR LINE (61, occurring 67 times) break--11 color line (no other words--ed.)--9 across--4 cross--4 along--1 balancing on--1 dancing over--1 over--1 draws--1 statement on--1 campaign on--1 life on--1 on--1 truth on--1 maintain--1 target--1 politics and--1 lives uneasily astride--1 problem of--1 disciple of color and line--1 divided on--1 fights on against--1 want no--1 envision no--1 contest spans--1 meets--1 focus on-- the world's--1 hair color line--1 fears of--1 other side of--1 new--1 remarks on--1 runs afoul of--1 extend to--1 look at--1 Check Newspaper Abstracts again in about a month. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 00:43:42 -0600 From: Greg Pulliam Subject: tipping There was a syndicated story from the Houston Chronicle in Sunday's Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times (I can find out for sure if anyone really needs to know) in which the writer noted that the term "tip" as in "tipping a waiter" came from an English inn several hundred years ago, where the innkeeper put out a box for money labelled "To Insure Promptness"--"T.I.P." The reporter simply gave this as the accepted etymology of the term, but it sounds mighty fishy to me. I don't have easy access to a decent etymological dictionary for a couple of days, so if anyone knows anything about this, I'd appreciate a short note on it. Thanks. Gregory J. Pulliam Illinois Institute of Technology Lewis Department of Humanities Chicago, IL 60616 gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.cns.iit.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 09:02:01 -0400 From: Jesse T Sheidlower Subject: Re: Rule of Thumb _Rule of thumb_ is a fascinating phrase, because the ridiculous-sounding folk-etymology (sc. that it's based on an old English law that a man was allowed to beat his wife as long as the stick he used was thinner than his thumb) has some basis in fact. First, the phrase _rule of thumb_ is not from this alleged law. However, reference to this practice is found in several places in English and American court cases from the late eighteenth century onwards. It does not seem to have been an actual law, but was seriously belived by some people to be so. The folk-etymology based on this practice apparently stems from a mid-1970s NOW report that mentions the _practice_ and calls it, apparently jocularly, a "rule of thumb." It did not say that that was the origin of the phrase, but it seems to have been misinterpreted that way. There's a short summary of this question at http://www.randomhouse.com/jesse/961108.html , and a long discussion, with citations from the relevant cases, at http://www.urbanlegends.com/language/etymology/rule_of_thumb.html Jesse Sheidlower ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 10:22:53 CST From: Ellen Johnson Subject: Re[2]: Rule of Thumb The article the math prof read was not really concerned with etymology, but with parodying "political correctness" and trivializing real problems of sexism. IMNSHO ellen ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 09:15:11 -0700 From: Peter McGraw Subject: Re: tipping My AHD (the best dictionary I have handy at the moment) says "Originally a slang word meaning 'to give,' 'to pass to,' from TIP (to tap)." However, I wonder about this. I've always heard it was derived from tipple, 'to drink alcoholic beverages,' which is supported by the fact that the word means to buy the recipient a drink in other European languages: German Trinkgeld, 'drink money', French pourboire, '[money] for drinking', Czech zpropitne [acute accent over the e], 'for a drink'. Peter McGraw Linfield College McMinnville, OR On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Greg Pulliam wrote: > There was a syndicated story from the Houston Chronicle in Sunday's Chicago > Tribune or Sun-Times (I can find out for sure if anyone really needs to > know) in which the writer noted that the term "tip" as in "tipping a > waiter" came from an English inn several hundred years ago, where the > innkeeper put out a box for money labelled "To Insure Promptness"--"T.I.P." > The reporter simply gave this as the accepted etymology of the term, but it > sounds mighty fishy to me. I don't have easy access to a decent > etymological dictionary for a couple of days, so if anyone knows anything > about this, I'd appreciate a short note on it. > Thanks. > > Gregory J. Pulliam > Illinois Institute of Technology > Lewis Department of Humanities > Chicago, IL 60616 > gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.cns.iit.edu > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:19:52 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: tipping The sources I've checked don't provide any direct support for a derivation from 'tipple'. The relevant noun and verb 'tip' are attested in the early 1700's, not restricted to contexts of drinking (booze), and are apparently a speciali- zation of the broader 'touch/push' group of meanings for 'tip'. What is quite clear is that there's about as much evidence for an acronymic source (To Insure Promptness, or whatever) with 'tip' as there with 'fuck' (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Fornication Under Consent of the King, whatever), viz. none (see Jesse's _The F-Word_ on the latter). For some reason, these initialistic/acronymic folk-etymologies retain an appeal entirely unwarranted in any fact, leaving aside attested cases like 'ikhthys' for Jesus, Hebrew surnames like 'Katz' and 'Raschi', and a few other oldies. Larry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 10:26:38 -0700 From: Peter McGraw Subject: Not exactly double modals I have no wish to become "Mr. Double Modals," but I kept thinking about this related usage.... My great aunt always said "used to could." While this isn't a double modal, it's really the same phenomenon: use of a finite form of the modal where an infinitive would be used if one were available. I don't think I ever knew anyone besides my great aunt who actually used this construction, though I've heard OF it elsewhere, probably as an element of caricatures of country speech. (The only actual example I remember is an article by James Thurber denouncing the language of advertising, saying he expected any day now to see a slogan, "We still brew good like we used to could.") My great aunt was not from the South, but her husband was from Tennessee. He died too long ago for me to remember whether he used the construction or not. So my question to you double-modal using Southerners out there: Do you also use "used to could"? I've just learned that Scots uses modals this way. Viz. the following message (prompted by my query about a message the writer had sent to another list): >Peter - >"Ye'll can" in Scots = "You will be able to" in English. Ither >constructions the same are "I'll no can", "he widnae cuid hae duin whit >ye say", and sae on. >Aa the best, >John Law Peter McGraw Linfield College McMinnville, OR ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 16:12:45 -0600 From: Miriam Meyers Subject: cracker and white trash I've been off the net for a few weeks and have just now read the strand on cracker and white trash. I agree with Michael Montgomery about use of cracker among Floridians and Georgians. Almost all my relatives live in one of the two states. My father (b. 1903) lived his childhood in Florida and went back in midlife. He always referred to Floridians as crackers. My cousin's husband, a native of extreme South Georgia (b. ca.1920) who moved to Florida to work after law school, refers to himself proudly as cracker. I don't view the term as pejorative. (And, yes, I attended Atlanta Crackers games as a child.) But white trash is right down there with nigger; they are two words that I cringe when I hear. It's based on experience of seeing the wretchedness of some people who are called that and of sensing how it must feel to be regarded as trash. This isn't linguistics, maybe, but it's part of my code: I object to calling any human being trash. Respectfully, Miriam Meyers, Metropolitan State University, Mpls/St.Paul ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 15:20:46 -0600 From: Gregory Pulliam Subject: used to could I used to could use this form when I lived in the South (Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, and even in Li'l Dixie in Missouri). I can't use it 'free and easy' in Chicago, although there are some contexts on the southside and the westside where I've heard it used, generally by AAVE speakers. Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:52:28 -0400 From: "Dennis R. Preston" Subject: Re: used to could What can you say besides 'used to could'? Can't nobody I know say 'Used to be able to' (less they funnin or, as Greg suggests, from the Deep North). DInIs >I used to could use this form when I lived in the South (Mississippi, >Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, and even in Li'l Dixie in Missouri). I can't >use it 'free and easy' in Chicago, although there are some contexts on the >southside and the westside where I've heard it used, generally by AAVE >speakers. > > >Greg Pulliam >gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu >Illinois Institute of Technology >Chicago Dennis R. Preston Department of Linguistics and Languages Michigan State University East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu Office: (517)432-1235 Fax: (517)432-2736 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:57:15 -0500 From: Mark Mandel Subject: cracker and white trash -Reply >>> Miriam Meyers 0407.1712 >>> [...] But white trash is right down there with nigger; they are two words that I cringe when I hear. It's based on experience of seeing the wretchedness of some people who are called that and of sensing how it must feel to be regarded as trash. This isn't linguistics, maybe, but it's part of my code: I object to calling any human being trash. <<< Amen! Understanding how a word is used and what social freight it carries absolutely IS a legitimate part of linguistics. And appreciating that knowledge and incorporating it into one's life is part of being a mensch. Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/ Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:06:12 -0400 From: "Dennis R. Preston" Subject: I'm sure word-watchers out there have it, but I was struck by the use of 'angst' as a verb (with the low-front vowel). This morning on Good Morning America, one of the anchors noted, after discussing some other trouble that you might run into this time of year, that 'You're alreading angsting over taxes.' Not me; I'm just out here Lautgesetzing, myself; keeping an eye on the Northern Cities Chain Shift. DInIs Dennis R. Preston Department of Linguistics and Languages Michigan State University East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu Office: (517)432-1235 Fax: (517)432-2736 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 21:22:02 -0400 From: "Bethany K. Dumas" Subject: Re: Not exactly double modals On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Peter McGraw wrote: > So my question to you double-modal using Southerners out there: Do you > also use "used to could"? I hear it fairly routinely and probably say it occasionally. (Susan?) Bethany Bethany K. Dumas, J.D., Ph.D. Applied Linguistics, Language & Law Department of English EMAIL: dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu 415 McClung Tower (423) 974-6965, (423) 974-6926 (FAX) University of Tennessee Editor, Language in the Judicial Process Knoxville, TN 37996-0430 USA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 21:44:47 +0000 From: Bill Spruiell <3lfyuji[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Subject: Re: used to could In my slightly-north-of-central-Alabama dialect, not only is "used to could" common, but a perhaps analogous construction, "might should ought to" is also. That last one is the only "triple-decker" modal that I can recall using naturally (as long as the "ought to" is pronounced "awda", of course). ------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily represent those of Central Michigan U. Bill Spruiell Central Michigan University Dept. of English Language and Literature ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 6 Apr 1997 to 7 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 7 Apr 1997 to 8 Apr 1997 There are 12 messages totalling 286 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Tipping 2. poor whites 3. tipping 4. Tipping -Reply 5. tipping -Reply 6. Alan Thomas 7. Intrusive L (was Re: ADS-L Digest) 8. used to could 9. Not exactly double modals 10. Etymologizing (2) 11. Fw: Not exactly double modals ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 07:20:39 -0400 From: Leslie Dunkling <106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Tipping The supposed acronymic origin of tip (in its gratuity sense) is an old chestnut. It ranks with the `port out starboard home' explanation of posh. As Larry Horn implies, fanciful nonsense is often more appealing than etymological fact. There is a good summary of the various developments of tip in Partridge's _Dictionary of Historical Slang_. Although there are several coincidental connections with tippling, one did not derive from the other. By the way, _Tavern Anecdotes and Sayings_, by Charles Hindley, (1881) glosses tippling as "holding communication with disembottled spirits." And the subject of tipping recalls Groucho Marx in A Night at the Opera asking the steward whether tipping is allowed. When told that it is he says "Have you got two fives?" "Oh, yes, sir." "Then you won't need the ten cents I was going to give you." (And as for rule of thumb, wasn't the breadth of a man's thumb formerly used as a rough and ready measure of one inch?) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 05:18:38 CST From: Ellen Johnson Subject: poor whites I would recommend Dorothy Allison's novel *Bastard out of Carolina*. It is partly autobiographical. The author also discusses her "white trash" upbringing in *Skin: Sex, Class, and Literature* where she discusses a variety of prejudices, including against certain sexual practices (very explicit, consider yourself warned). She tells how she has moved from shame, to an in-your-face type of attitude about her background, to self-acceptance. ellen.johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]wku.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:30:35 +0000 From: "E.W. Gilman" Subject: tipping It occurs to me that it is curious that no one to my knowledge has pointed out the illogicality of the supposed acronymic source--to insure promptness--of the word tip. How could money given after the meal or whatever is consumed insure prompt service? If the tip were given first, maybe, but some of the tips I have given over the years would only insure dilatoriness. E.W.Gilman ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:16:04 -0500 From: Mark Mandel Subject: Tipping -Reply >>> Leslie Dunkling <106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM> 0408.0620 >>> The supposed acronymic origin of tip (in its gratuity sense) is an old chestnut. It ranks with the `port out starboard home' explanation of posh. As Larry Horn implies, fanciful nonsense is often more appealing than etymological fact. [spacing added -- MAM] <<<< Has anyone ever tried to explain this general phenomenon? Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/ Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 11:09:27 -0500 From: Mark Mandel Subject: tipping -Reply >>> E.W. Gilman 0408.0430 >>> It occurs to me that it is curious that no one to my knowledge has pointed out the illogicality of the supposed acronymic source--to insure promptness--of the word tip. How could money given after the meal or whatever is consumed insure prompt service? If the tip were given first, maybe, but some of the tips I have given over the years would only insure dilatoriness. <<< This counter-argument, at least, fails my reality test. Sure, a stranger passing through the only place in the country with such a box couldn't benefit from it, nor the waiters (or whatever) from him. But: a. Repeat customers stand to benefit from a reputation as good tippers (or even more so, discriminating tippers!). Consider the farmer who comes to market every week or every month, or the drummer (traveling salesman) on a regular route. b. If the custom is widespread, then even the passer-through can be expected with some confidence to know about it, and to tip after good service -- or, conversely, to tip in the expectation of good service. You may read "hope" for "expect(ation)" here, since the one-time transaction depends on trust. Mind yez, I do not support the purportive acronymic origin! I'm just trying to keep the counter-arguments clean. Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/ Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 12:47:13 -0400 From: Ron Butters Subject: Alan Thomas Has anyone heard from Alan Thomas lately? He hasn't been answering my e-mail messages, though he is usually very prompt. I hope he is OK. I desperately need his mailing address; if anyone has it, will you please send it to me? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 18:00:25 -0400 From: Beverly Flanigan Subject: Re: Intrusive L (was Re: ADS-L Digest) A further note on intrusive 'l': I have a graduate student from Athens County who not only said 'draw(l)ing' as a child but also said/says 'grandmawl'--and wrote it that way (or 'grammal' perhaps, since southern Ohio has open O)* until his teacher corrected it. But he agreed with me that it is a dark l--at least word-finally, if not medially (and I'll withhold comment on that one yet). It seems to be the very same 'l' that is vocalized in Philadelphia and Baltimore (I recall not understanding my mother-in-law from Balto when she pronounced 'ball' and 'oil'--the latter was 'aw(l)' with no [l]. *This sound in Southern Ohio is not really open O but is midway between [a] and [O], close to the British low back vowel (upside down or backward [a]?). The spelling of 'mamaw' and 'papaw' reflects the same low back /a/. Beverly Flanigan ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 18:33:30 -0400 From: Beverly Flanigan Subject: Re: used to could Well, DInIs, we Deep Northerners do say "used to be able to"--I heard no other way until I moved to Ohio! (And you don't get any deeper North than western Minnesota and Fargo; the scenes of snows and floods in "Monte" and Granite Falls, MN are from my neck of the woods--I grew up near the Yellow Medicine River, which flows into the Minnesota, which flows into the Mississippi....) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 18:05:36 -0600 From: "Susan G. North" Subject: Re: Not exactly double modals Indeed, I used to could do all kinds of things that I can't do now. I asked a friend of mine from Texas whether he used this particular construction and he said that it sounded like something he would say but he didn't think he ever had. I think I probably say it less often that I used to because I'm getting to the age I don't want to admit all that I can't do. But I think it's still a pretty common construction here in East Tennessee. Susan North Department of English The University of Tennessee > >I hear it fairly routinely and probably say it occasionally. (Susan?) > >Bethany > >Bethany K. Dumas, J.D., Ph.D. Applied Linguistics, Language & Law >Department of English EMAIL: dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu >415 McClung Tower (423) 974-6965, (423) 974-6926 (FAX) >University of Tennessee Editor, Language in the Judicial Process >Knoxville, TN 37996-0430 USA ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 19:44:39 -0400 From: Leslie Dunkling <106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Etymologizing Mark Mandel asks whether `anyone ever tried to explain this general phenomenon' (of preferring fanciful etymologies to factual ones). I don't know whether Ernest Weekley is known in the States. He was professor of French at Nottingham University when D.H.Lawrence was a student there. Lawrence eloped with his wife, but that's another story. In his own right, Professor Weekley was a philologist of the highest order, compiler of an _Etymological Dictionary of Modern English_, author of several popular books about words and names. He used to fume about letters in newspapers which gave fanciful explanations of word-origins based on guess-work. He could not explain the phenomenon, but he was equally puzzled by it, and when you read what he has to say about it you can picture him tearing his hair. Sample quotes from a chapter in his _Words and Names_, entitled "Our Lunatic Contributor": "To the student there is something almost awe-inspiring in the martial impatience with which the amateur cuts the Gordian knots of etymology..." "The question naturally suggests itself - who invents all these futilities? Is there some secret factory where half-wits are set to work by the Moriarty of a gang engaged in uttering etymological fictions, or do the writers of these letters evolve their anecdotes from their own inner consciousness? Is it a complex, or an inhibition, or a morbid libido, or what, in the name of Grimm's law, is it?" It is still a popular pastime in Britain to come up with ingenious explanations of pub names. Thus, Bag o' Nails (originally a pub frequented by carpenters) is said to be a corruption of Bacchanalia; the Elephant and Castle (from the elephant and howdah on the crest of the Cutler's Company) is supposedly a reference to the Infanta de Castile. Other names are explained in similar fashion - Cold Harbour is from French, col d'arbres. Perhaps it was the same francophile etymologist who discovered that Shakespeare was a corruption of Jacques-Pierre. The interesting thing is that once these stories get into circulation it seems to be impossible to withdraw them. As far as most people are concerned, truth may be stranger than fiction but it still isn't as interesting. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 09:33:30 -0000 From: Dazaifu Subject: Fw: Not exactly double modals "Used to could" is common in my (New Orleans area) dialect, although I DON'T use double modals. Of course, now that I don't live in Louisiana any more, I have had to start saying "used to be able to" :( Another aspect of New Orleans dialect is the following. Do any other areas have this, too? "been _______ing" Ex. 'Is that a new shirt?' 'No, I ('ve) been having this shirt.' (with stress on the 'been') Ex. 'I've been knowing him all my life.' (instead of 'have known') I'm curious about this last form because I have never met anyone outside of Louisiana who has even heard of it before. Thanks, Tara Sanchez dzfhs-02[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mxw.meshnet.or.jp ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 22:20:02 -0400 From: Ron Butters Subject: Re: Etymologizing >Mark Mandel asks whether >`anyone ever tried to explain >this general phenomenon' (of >preferring fanciful etymologies >to factual ones). It has always seemed to me that this must be a part of the same impulse that leads children to try to figure out meaning connections and leads to such howlers as TAKE IT FOR GRANITE and GLADLY THE CROSS-EYED BEAR. Haven't we all been taught that linguistic creativity is mired into our brains? ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 7 Apr 1997 to 8 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 8 Apr 1997 to 9 Apr 1997 There are 7 messages totalling 134 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Etymologizing -Reply 2. been knowing 3. Alan Thomas (2) 4. hacker's dictionary (2) 5. URL for Hacker's Dictionary ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 09:08:33 -0500 From: Mark Mandel Subject: Re: Etymologizing -Reply >>> Ron Butters 0408.2120 >>> It has always seemed to me that this must be a part of the same impulse that leads children to try to figure out meaning connections and leads to such howlers as TAKE IT FOR GRANITE and GLADLY THE CROSS-EYED BEAR. Haven't we all been taught that linguistic creativity is mired into our brains? ****** [emphasis added -- MAM] <<<<< Whether thought-out or a creative slip of the fingers, Ron, that is beautiful! Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/ Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:34:22 -0600 From: Joan Houston Hall Subject: Re: been knowing Volume III of DARE has a treatment of "been knowing" at "know" verb, section C. We've labelled it "esp Gulf States." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 23:44:01 +0900 From: Daniel Long Subject: Re: Alan Thomas Professor Alan Thomas School of English and Linguistics University of Wales Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2DG Great Britain Now I want a favor. Could you remind Charles to put the AS offprints in the mail for me, please. Danny Ron Butters wrote: > > Has anyone heard from Alan Thomas lately? He hasn't been answering my e-mail > messages, though he is usually very prompt. I hope he is OK. > > I desperately need his mailing address; if anyone has it, will you please > send it to me? -- (Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor Japanese Language Research Center Osaka Shoin Women's College 4-2-26 Hishiyanishi Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577 tel and fax +81-6-729-1831 email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 23:48:09 +0900 From: Daniel Long Subject: Re: Alan Thomas Woops. It seems I sent private mail to ADS-l. Sorry. I discovered the mistake just as I pushed the "send" button, but it was too late. danny "just glad I hadn't written anything REALLY private" long ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:10:19 -0500 From: Gregory Pulliam Subject: hacker's dictionary A student sent this URL to me--if it's been previously posted, forgive me. It's called "A Hacker's Dictionary", and it's VERY interesting. Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 17:39:38 -0400 From: "Johnnie A. Renick" Subject: Re: hacker's dictionary In a message dated 97-04-09 17:03:28 EDT, gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU (Gregory Pulliam) writes: << A student sent this URL to me--if it's been previously posted, forgive me. It's called "A Hacker's Dictionary", and it's VERY interesting. Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago >> I got this message but no address. Is there one? Thanks Johnnie Renick tenderrite[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 16:51:06 -0500 From: Gregory Pulliam Subject: URL for Hacker's Dictionary Yikes! Did I forget to include the URL? It's http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_toc.html Sorry. Guess I'll go back to my comet-gazing now. I'm starting a new "group" for comet-watchers, BTW. We're calling ourselves "Ishtar." Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 8 Apr 1997 to 9 Apr 1997 ********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1997 to 10 Apr 1997 There are 9 messages totalling 362 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Baseball, Hot Dogs.... 2. Chicago, "the Windy City" 3. official english 4. poor whites (2) 5. DSNA conference info (3) 6. Variation in "try"-complements? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 02:24:36 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Baseball, Hot Dogs.... "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet." --Chevrolet ads in the 1970s It's baseball season again. In less than three months it will be July--National Hot Dog Month--and "TAD" Dorgan will once again invent the phrase "hot dog" that he never invented. I don't know how to stop it. Obviously, hundreds of dollars of mailings and letters to the editor don't work. If the National Hot Dog Council were to say, for example--"Hot Dogs! They're great for you! Zero calories!! Zero cholesterol!! A terrific source of Vitamin C!!"--they'd be sued. But anyone can lie about the meaning of words and phrases! Rule of thumb, tip, POSH, OK--make up whatever you want!! You want it to mean something good? Something bad? Do you want it to come from Africa? Asia? Brooklyn? Write ANYTHING you want! It's not like there are any professionals who research this! Several of my important Baseball & Hot Dogs stuff hasn't yet been in Comments on Etymology, and I DIDN'T find this in the Cooperstown Library's "Hot Dog" file. Gerald Cohen began the COE series with "HOT DOG" REVISITED Feb./March 1991, then UPDATE ON "HOT DOG" Feb. 1993, then many more. He's working on the monograph now. On 14 January 1941, at the Commodore Hotel in New York City (now the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station), there was a baseball dinner to honor the memory of Harry Stevens and "the Golden Jubilee of the hot dog as a baseball comestible." This can be found in a short note in The Sporting News, 16 January 1941, pg. 8, col. 7, "Hot Stuff for Hot Doggers." These other articles followed. 23 January 1941, The Sporting News, pg. 4, col. 1 (editorials): PUTTING ON THE DOG FOR THE HOT DOG At the dinner given by the baseball writers of New York to the four Stevens brothers, leaders in major league food purveying, the Golden Jubilee of the Hot Dog as a diamond comestible was celebrated with fitting ceremony. (...) It was 50 years ago that Harry Stevens recognized the importance of the frankfurter as a baseball "appetizer." For years the wienie labored under the handicap of being under suspicion. It was said that when a hunk of meat was stuffed into a jacket, it was pretty far gone. Stevens was having a lot of success with the frankfurter at the Polo Grounds, when Tad--T. A. Dorgan, great sports cartoonist of the Journal, now dead--fastened the moniker of hot dog on the article of food Harry blazed up. (...) (A photo and story about the dinner can be found on Pg. 8--ed.) 13 February 1941, The Sporting News, pg. 4, col. 5, "THREE AND ONE: Looking them over with J. G. Spink." Feeding the Fans in Stevens Family-Style (...) "I never will forget how dad got sore when Tad--T. A. Dorgan, sports cartoonist of the Journal--first called the frankfurter the Hot Dog. Father thought this moniker would give the public ideas about the contents of the dog-skin, and kill the sales. But Tad made the hot dog a baseball fixture. He not only publicized it with the picturesque name, but used the dogs in his cartoons. You may recollect how he had the frankfurters making wisecracks to each other." (...) Let me check the new American Heritage Dictionary of American Quotations, by Margaret Miner and Hugh Rawson. Hm, no "hot dog." Not at all! For that matter, not even a single quote by TAD! Whew boy, that's great! He didn't get it wrong!! Let me just check "Big Apple." Let's see, page 99: Harlem is the precious fruit in the Garden of Eden, the big apple. --ALAIN LOCKE, c. 1919. (An early example of the "big apple" metaphor, cited in Deirdre Mullane, ed., _Words to Make My Children Live: A Book of African American Quotations_, 1995. Locke, who earned a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, was the first black Rhodes Scholar, and taught philosophy at Howard University. He edited _The New Negro_, 1925, an anthology that introduced the writers of the Harlem Renaissance to a wide audience.) Debunked by me six years ago in a letter to The New York Times that was never published. Excuse me, I have to eat some applesauce. I'll be right back! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 03:34:42 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Chicago, "the Windy City" "April is the cruellest month." --T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" (1922). "Be thankful I don't take it all." --Beatles, "Tax Man." Gosh, it was only applesauce! As I've posted before, on February 12th Mayor Rudolph Giuliani signed my "Big Apple Corner" bill into law. Sitting to my left to watch it was a writer named Richard Barbieri, who will include some of my stuff in his trivia book on New York City. "Did you get twenty-four dollars?" he asked. "I never got a penny," I said. "The Museum of New York City gives twenty-four dollar awards to New Yorkers who do good deeds. That's the price that New York was bought for from the Indians. I'll recommend you for it," he said. I hardly contained myself, so I told my sister, who was also there. "Twenty-four dollars, that's income," she said. "You can deduct expenses on your taxes." I'm now doing my taxes. I can't deduct anything--not my trip to the British Isles, not my trips to the Library of Congress, nothing. Twenty-four dollars, if it DOES come, will buy me about half of DARE III. That's half of one book. Maybe I can buy two letters. I should have been prepared for this by now, but things have gotten worse. I'm still shocked about what's happened after I solved the origin of Chicago's nickname, "the Windy City." I spent twelve weeks to get a form rejection letter from the Chicago Historical Society that the meaning of Chicago's nickname wasn't for them--well, that's old news. I'd like to deduct the $100 in mailing and copying costs, just like any other donation--ah, forget it. THE WINDY CITY was published in the January 1997 issue of Comments on Etymology, with a few errors. The New York Evening Telegram picked the phrase up from the Louisville Courier-Journal as early as May 12, not May 22, 1886. Also and most importantly, a cartoon was not published. In the Puck of 28 April 1886, pages 136-137 (a week before the Haymarket Riots that would give Chicago its nickname), Miss Justice is seen using a prick called "Law" to puncture "THE BIG BOYCOTT WIND-BAG." It's great stuff. I sent it all to the Chicago Tribune, a great newspaper that is celebrating its 150th anniversary. I thought they could use this--a free, exclusive story on the origin of "the Windy City." I told them to print it around the Haymarket Riot date of May 4. An e-mail message was also sent, and I begged, begged, BEGGED for the simple courtesy of a response. The Chicago Tribune never responded. So I sent it all to the Chicago Sun-Times, and I BEGGED, BEGGED, BEGGED, BEGGED FOR THE SIMPLE COURTESY OF A RESPONSE. The Chicago Sun-Times never responded, either. These are newspapers that ran stories of Dennis Rodman's mascara on page one. Through the internet, I got the addresses of all forty of Chicago's aldermen. Three weeks ago, I wrote forty letters. Forty letters. Forty letters! FORTY LETTERS!! I went to Kinko's Copies at three a.m. after a full day's work; each package of stuff cost me about $12. I told each of Chicago's alderman the meaning of "the Windy City." I asked them to honor the appropriate people this and every May 4th, and to possibly put up plaques. This is, after all, their job. Maybe I should have asked for big bucks, like twenty-four dollars. What I did ask for--again--was the simple courtesy of a response. Well, it's three weeks later! As I'm doing to everyone, guess who responded! Guess how many of the forty people! Guess! Guess!! I got it back yesterday! Alderman Burton F. Natarus, 100 W. Grand Ave., Chicago, IL 60610. RETURNED TO SENDER. FT. DEARBORN SECTION 10 ATTEMPTED NOT KNOWN. No one! No one responded at all!! NOBODY!! Is this all a cruel cosmic joke? Can anyone, ANYONE out there give me any good reason for living??? STRONGER APPLESAUCE! I NEED STRONGER APPLESAUCE RIGHT NOW!! "This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:48:27 -0400 From: "M. Lynne Murphy" <104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA> Subject: official english in case you haven't seen this... lynne ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: daily[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]chronicle.com Date sent: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 08:00:00 EDT To: daily[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]chronicle.com Subject: 4/10/97 Daily Report from ACADEME TODAY Academe Today's DAILY REPORT for subscribers of The Chronicle of Higher Education _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ MAGAZINES & JOURNALS A glance at the April issue of "The Atlantic Monthly": Is "official English" a threat to U.S. unity? For centuries, countries around the world have been divided over the disparate languages spoken by their citizens. Language as a divisive social and political force is a concept alien to Americans, but is that changing? asks Robert D. King, a linguistics professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In spite of many state and local laws designating English as the "official language," and despite the conservative "English Only" movement, "America is not threatened by language," Dr. King writes. Language is a potentially explosive issue in countries like Canada and Belgium because it is the defining characteristic of nationality, he writes. But countries such as Switzerland, which has four official languages, and India, which recognizes 19, are not divided over language because they have strong national identities, Dr. King writes. In the United States, issues such as immigration, the rights of minority groups, and bilingual education fuel the English Only movement. "I suggest that we relax and luxuriate in our linguistic richness and our traditional tolerance of language differences," he writes. "Benign neglect is a good policy for any country when it comes to language, and it's a good policy for America." (The magazine may be found at your library or newsstand.) _________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:03:31 -0600 From: Miriam Meyers Subject: Re: poor whites I agree with Ellen Johnson that reading Dorothy Allison's novel "Bastard out of Carolina" is instructive. So is her novel "Trash," even more raw than "Bastard." She's an extremely powerful writer about poor Southern whites. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 14:46:46 -0400 From: "Peter L. Patrick" Subject: Re: poor whites I meant to post on this before but didn't have my copy available. The Winter 96 issue of Human Organization has an article by Jane Gibson that I found very helpful: "The Social Construction of Whiteness in Shellcracker Haven, Florida".Abstract: This artiocle examines the ways in which socially coinstructed racial categories are operationalized. It challenges popular and scholarly representations of the meanings of "whiteness" and considers processes of racial identity formation uin the production of white poverty. The primary thesis is that poor whites... are racially denigrated in the context of the historically specific social, political and economic processes that pauperize them. These processes are necessarily unique because, unlike visible minorities whose distinctive physiognomy facilitates socially constructed differentiation, the distancing and devaluation of poor whites requires other tactics. These include constrcution of stereotyped images, behaviors and values which create social distance and "explain" white poverty. A secondary thesis holds that racial denigration of poor whites intensifies racism. Racism acts as a unilateral (and seldom reciprocated) assertion of membership in privileged white society. It also blocks identification with others who... also find themselves poor and disenfranchised. By promoting racism aimed at non-white social groups, racism aimed at poor whites protects the status quo of the distribution of power and privilege in the US. If you find the abstract a bit dense, as I did at first, Gibson's wonderful case study of a poor N Fla fishing community makes a lot of it clear and vivid. She also points out how few studies of poor whites consider race as a relevant category and cites some of the few, most of them studies of Appalachia. --peter p. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 11:40:06 -0500 From: Luanne von Schneidemesser Subject: DSNA conference info For those of you waiting for registration information for the DSNA conference in Madison in May, we have been informed that this has finally been mailed. Our apologies for the delay; it was out of our hands. In the meantime, you could take a look at DARE's homepage, where I've posted the information. We hope to see you in Madison soon. We promise warmer weather than we have now (not a hard promise to keep). In case any of you are not yet DSNA members and will therefore not receive the mailing but are interested, please let us know. Luanne _____________________________ Luanne von Schneidemesser Dictionary of American Regional English University of Wisconsin-Madison 6129 H.C. White Hall 600 N. Park St. Madison WI 53706 (608) 263-2748 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:28:05 -0700 From: Peter Richardson Subject: Re: DSNA conference info Could you please send me the www address of the DARE home page? Thanks very much! Peter Richardson ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:24:20 +0900 From: Daniel Long Subject: Re: DSNA conference info Peter Richardson wrote: > Could you please send me the www address of the DARE home page? Thanks > very much! I wanted it too. Here's what I found on Yahoo. I'd like to say that I think Luanne von Schneidemesser and Joan Houston Hall do not only an excellent job with DARE itself, but with keeping us all furnished with DARE information relevant to the ADS-l topics. I hope you will keep us posted on developments at the website as well. http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html Danny Long (Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor Japanese Language Research Center Osaka Shoin Women's College 4-2-26 Hishiyanishi Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577 tel and fax +81-6-729-1831 email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 22:53:50 +0000 From: Bill Spruiell <3lfyuji[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Subject: Variation in "try"-complements? This is one of those topics that may have already been discussed; if so, please accept apologies -- In my grammar class yesterday, I was engaged in presenting the unit on verbs that take gerundial or infinitival objects. I checked to see if anyone used the "enjoy to X" pattern; as I expected for my Michigan class, no one did. However, when I got to the class of verb constructions that change meaning depending on whether the object is an infinitive or gerund ("forgot to lock the door" vs. "forgot locking the door"), I got a surprise. None of my students could detect any difference between "tried opening the door" and "tried to open the door", even when I supplied extensive contexts, different verbals, etc. Assuming that they really do use the gerund and infinitive objects interchangably with "try" -- i.e. that it's not an artifact of my presentation of the subject -- I was wondering what the dialectal status of this "reassignment" is. Is it common over a wide area, or have I stumbled into a Central Michigan shibboleth? I'm considering it as being in varience with "standard" since textbooks (particularly ESL textbooks) class "try" with "forget"; as a southerner, I'm a bit leery of trusting my instincts on things like this (I was 23 before I found out that "fixing to" was nonStandard). Thanks --- Bill Spruiell ------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily represent those of Central Michigan U. Bill Spruiell Central Michigan University Dept. of English Language and Literature ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1997 to 10 Apr 1997 *********************************************** Subject: ADS-L Digest - 10 Apr 1997 to 11 Apr 1997 There are 13 messages totalling 522 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Variation in "try"-complements? (10) 2. sharing data for free on internet 3. Gullah -- help needed 4. Mission & Goals ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 23:21:55 -0700 From: Kim & Rima McKinzey Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? This has piqued some curiosity. I grew up in NYC and have lived there or in the Bay Area for the rest thus far. I never heard "enjoy to X" pattern (I assumed you meant infinitive there as opposed to gerund). I clearly understand the difference between "forgot to lock the door" vs. "forgot locking the door." But I, too, don't get a difference between the "tried" examples. Rima ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 07:46:00 -0400 From: "David A. Johns" Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? At 10:53 PM 4/10/97 +0000, Bill Spruiell wrote: > However, when I got to the class of verb >constructions that change meaning depending on whether the object is >an infinitive or gerund ("forgot to lock the door" vs. "forgot >locking the door"), I got a surprise. None of my students could >detect any difference between "tried opening the door" and "tried to open >the door", even when I supplied extensive contexts, different >verbals, etc. I don't get "forgot locking the door" at all -- can't imagine what it means. With _try_, I sense an aspectual difference that has pragmatic consequences in certain contexts: "Would you try to open the door" implies that I think it will be hard, while "Would you try opening the door" suggests that I want to see if it has some effect, such as cooling the house down. But I don't feel any difference in "He walked up onto the porch and tried [to open | opening] the door, but when he found it was locked, turned around and left." I don't think I've noticed any unfamiliar gerunds since being in Georgia, although I may have lost them in the sea of unexpected progressives ("I'm needing a new notebook," etc.). I'll have to listen. David Johns Waycross College Waycross, GA (originally from real Yankee country, though not a real Yankee myself, since my family hadn't lived there for umpteen generations. And weren't farmers. But we did eat "rat cheese" with apple pie.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 07:55:07 -0500 From: Wayne Glowka Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? >This has piqued some curiosity. I grew up in NYC and have lived there or >in the Bay Area for the rest thus far. I never heard "enjoy to X" pattern >(I assumed you meant infinitive there as opposed to gerund). I clearly >understand the difference between "forgot to lock the door" vs. "forgot >locking the door." But I, too, don't get a difference between the "tried" >examples. > >Rima So what is the difference in the "forgot" locutions? Wayne Glowka ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 06:41:28 -0600 From: "Susan G. North" Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? As an East Tennesseean, I don't get the difference between the "tried locking" and "tried to lock" either. You'd have to supply those difference contexts for me as well. However, students in my English classes here at the University of Tennessee, most of whom are also Tennesseans, frequently write "try and ..." instead of "tried to ..." Any thoughts on that? Susan North Department of English The University of Tennessee snorth[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:40:30 -0600 From: Kat Rose Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? Bill Spruiell asked if the interchangeable use of gerund and infinitive objects with "try" were common in areas other than Central Michigan. I grew up in the Quint (now Quad) Cities, Illinois side, and have been in Colorado (north central Front Range) for 25 years. This interchangeable use is common in conversation in both places. I use "tried opening..." for both "attempted the task of opening..." and "attempted to achieve a goal by opening...", taking meaning from context. HTH [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]>-->--- Kat Rose Kat.Rose[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]spot.Colorado.edu My words, my rights, my responsibility ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:08:34 -0700 From: Peter McGraw Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, David A. Johns wrote: > At 10:53 PM 4/10/97 +0000, Bill Spruiell wrote: > > > However, when I got to the class of verb > >constructions that change meaning depending on whether the object is > >an infinitive or gerund ("forgot to lock the door" vs. "forgot > >locking the door"), I got a surprise. None of my students could > >detect any difference between "tried opening the door" and "tried to open > >the door", even when I supplied extensive contexts, different > >verbals, etc. > > I don't get "forgot locking the door" at all -- can't imagine what it means. > With _try_, I sense an aspectual difference that has pragmatic consequences > in certain contexts: "Would you try to open the door" implies that I think > it will be hard, while "Would you try opening the door" suggests that I want > to see if it has some effect, such as cooling the house down. But I don't > feel any difference in "He walked up onto the porch and tried [to open | > opening] the door, but when he found it was locked, turned around and left." Ditto from Oregon. This describes my usage exactly. I haven't lived in Oregon all my life (though my growing up was here and in S. California), but I'm fairly sure I would have noticed any variation from my own usage in this matter. Peter McGraw Linfield College McMinnville, OR > > I don't think I've noticed any unfamiliar gerunds since being in Georgia, > although I may have lost them in the sea of unexpected progressives ("I'm > needing a new notebook," etc.). I'll have to listen. > > David Johns > Waycross College > Waycross, GA > (originally from real Yankee country, though not a real Yankee myself, since > my family hadn't lived there for umpteen generations. And weren't farmers. > But we did eat "rat cheese" with apple pie.) > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:42:06 -0700 From: Peter Richardson Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? > > I don't get "forgot locking the door" at all -- can't imagine what it > means. I suspect the meaning is "forgot that I had locked the door" or "forgot having locked the door." This, of course, is just the opposite of "forgot to lock the door." As long as we're on "forget," how about "remember"? i.e. I remembered visiting him at home vs. I remembered to visit him at home. (I trust that no one out there confuses these two, but am certainly willing to be proven wrong.) As a newcomer to this list, I don't know whether the overstated "I would have liked to have seen him" has come up, or what the opinions (I won't reveal mine) are about I would like to have seen him and I would have liked to see him. Some treat these as equals, some don't, and others (most, I guess) just go for the gusto and combine the two, as in the first example at the beginning of this paragraph. > > to see if it has some effect, such as cooling the house down. But I don't > > feel any difference in "He walked up onto the porch and tried [to open | > > opening] the door, but when he found it was locked, turned around and left." I think either works fine in this larger context, but--as you--can certainly feel a difference in the shorter phrases between infinitive-as-object and gerund-as-object. (My formative language background: northern Illinois) Peter Richardson Linfield College / Oregon> ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12:07:13 -0500 From: Gregory Pulliam Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? Has anyone else noted "try for" instead of "try to" +present participle/infinitive? I'm don't recall for sure, but I think I heard this in Memphis, perhaps by a speaker of AAVE. Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 13:35:22 -0400 From: Beverly Flanigan Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? This is the same construction I wrote about a few days ago, when I said that I heard "want for/try for/plan for" etc. from a white classmate who had lived as a child in South Carolina. I don't recall whether she used it with an infinitive only or with a gerund as well--only the former sticks in my memory. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12:45:49 -0500 From: Gregory Pulliam Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? > This is the same construction I wrote about a few days ago, when I said > that I heard "want for/try for/plan for" etc. from a white classmate > who had lived as a child in South Carolina. I don't recall whether she > used it with an infinitive only or with a gerund as well--only the > former sticks in my memory. I can clearly hear "I mo try for goin to work now" as well as "I mo try for go to work now." But then, I clearly hear sounds coming from Hale-Bopp, too. Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 16:11:52 CST From: Ellen Johnson Subject: sharing data for free on internet I'm not really clear on how all this will affect linguists, but it is a warning that we may not be able to share our data over the internet if proposals in Congress to privatize access are passed. Ellen ______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________ Subject: More on CODATA "Bits of Power" study Author: Julian Humphries at INETGW Date: 4/11/97 11:14 AM A little more info on the Bits of Power study. What follows are the introductory remarks to the press provided by the chair of the study committee, Steve Berry. Anybody with additional questions about CODATA or its activities should feel free to contact me for information. ********************************************** Public Briefing April 10, 1997 OPENING STATEMENT R. Stephen Berry James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute The University of Chicago and Chair, Committee on Issues in the Transborder Flow of Scientific Data National Research Council Good morning. I welcome you today as we release the report Bits of Power: Issues in Global Access to Scientific Data. This report represents the work of a National Research Council committee that I have chaired during the past two years. At the behest of the U.S. National Committee for CODATA (Committee on Data for Science and Technology of the International Council of Scientific Unions), our study group has investigated the changing environment for the international exchange of data in the natural sciences. We have completed our study and now offer our conclusions and recommendations in this report. I shall assume that we all share the view that research in the natural sciences is a necessary component of our society, and that maintaining the health of this enterprise is something we all consider important. Scientific data are essential to that health; without ready access to data, scientists could not conduct their research. Fostered by the tools of modern electronic communication, the nature of science today is perhaps the most truly international of all human activities. In carrying out our research, we scientists exchange ideas and data as readily with colleagues in Tokyo or Sydney or Berlin as we do with those in our own universities or federal laboratories. A fundamental principle underlies our report which embodies this characteristic in the context of data: Full and open exchange of scientific data -- the "bits of power" on which the health of the scientific enterprise depends -- is vital for the nation's progress and for maximizing the social benefits that accrue from science worldwide. This principle of "full and open exchange" means that data and information derived from publicly funded research should be available with as few restrictions as possible, on a non-discriminatory basis, for no more than the cost of reproduction and distribution. This principle -- sometimes called "the Bromley principle" -- was first enunciated in the context of global change research, in a statement of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in July, 1991. Two trends, sometimes in conflict, are challenging the attainment of full and open sharing of scientific data across national boundaries. One is the rapid increase in volume of data that stems from technical advances such as computers, networks, and remote sensors. The other is a global trend toward imposing economic and legal restrictions on access to scientific data derived from publicly funded research. The first trend forces scientists to re-examine how they carry out their own work, and the second, to involve themselves in the formation of public policies that will affect their capabilities for doing research. One manifestation of these trends acting in concert is the growing congestion of the Internet. This stems from the simultaneous needs of scientists to exchange ever-larger volumes of data, and the evolution of the primary role of the Internet from a medium of scientific communication to a medium of commerce and entertainment. The committee is particularly concerned about possible changes to treaties and laws covering intellectual property, which would have adverse effects on the conduct of science. The problem reached a crux with current attempts, both national and international, to establish a new legal framework that threatens to subordinate the needs of scientists and others working in the public interest, to the interests of entrepreneurs in the business of selling databases. Put in perspective, the challenge of the underlying issue is finding a balance between the protection of public goods and the protection of individual intellectual property. Unfortunately, the concerns of the scientific and educational communities went unheard in the dialogue until very recently. The committee believes that it is imperative for the scientific community to have a part in formulating the structures that will suitably balance the public and private interests. This is especially important now because the World Intellectual Property Organization is considering a new treaty on database protection, and related proposals to enact domestic legislation protecting databases are under consideration for Congressional action. We view proposals that have appeared thus far as extremely threatening to the conduct of scientific research. They would remove the "fair use" exemptions which have long allowed scientists and educators to use copyrighted materials free or at very reduced costs, specifically for purposes such as research and teaching. These proposals would create exclusive, monopolistic rights of virtually unlimited duration for database owners, and would make it extremely difficult in many cases for competitive data-suppliers to enter the market. The committee recommends, as a general principle, that full and open access be adopted as the international norm for scientific data derived from publicly funded research. More specific recommendations fall into four categories: legal issues, economic issues, technological issues, and, of course, data issues internal to the natural sciences. The five recommendations concerning legal issues are directed toward the Office of Science and Technology Policy, science agencies and professional societies including CODATA, and all others concerned with sustaining the health of the scientific enterprise. First, these bodies should advocate and explain to all relevant legislative forums the principle of full and open exchange of scientific data. Second, they should demand that national and international legislative processes now in progress allow the scientific and educational communities to participate in the dialogue and present their views. This must be done to achieve a balance between concerns for public goods and for private intellectual property. Third, these groups should advocate the incorporation of fair use principles into any legislation or regulation structure applying to scientific data on electronic media. Fourth, these bodies and individuals should work with Congress and the U.S. representatives to the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization to resist measures that could weaken the nation's preeminence in science and technology. Finally, these issues should be pursued not only within the United States but also internationally, through international scientific organizations and U.S. foreign policy channels concerned with intellectual property. The dominant economic concerns of the report stem from the ways and means by which scientific data are generated, archived and distributed, and with the trend toward commercialization of increasing quantities of data. Some of this commercialization is privatization of activities that were previously done by governments, and some is entry of governments into commercial vending of data. One might initially suppose that privatizing the distribution of scientific data would be desirable. However, a careful analysis shows that the market for scientific data is very different from those of ordinary commerce, and that privatization may, in many situations, be undesirable for the society as a whole. The committee recommends a set of economic criteria for structuring facilities and institutions for the distribution of scientific data generated by public funding. Within the sciences, relevant scientific organizations should examine the development of better coordinated networks of data centers. Planning is needed now to find stable ways to maintain the effectiveness of the Internet or some variant thereof for exchange of scientific information. Scientists who generate data through publicly funded research should make their results available as soon as possible. If they wish to hold a data set for some period in order to explore its consequences, the duration of that period should be established by the particular scientific communities, and adherence should be monitored by the appropriate funding agency. The Office of Science and Technology Policy should develop an overall policy for the long-term retention of scientific data. Finally, a variety of efforts, including aid in the form of computers and networks, is needed to assist developing countries to participate fully in electronic data management and exchange for research and education--for their benefit and ours. Thank you all. We would like to begin now to take your questions. Would you come to one of the standing microphones and state your name and affiliation before you begin your question? Received: from axp1.wku.edu by INETGW.WKU.EDU (SMTPLINK V2.11 PreRelease 4) ; Fri, 11 Apr 97 11:14:10 CST Return-Path: Received: from cmsa.Berkeley.EDU by axp1.wku.edu (MX V4.3 Alpha) with SMTP; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:14:02 CDT Received: from CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU by cmsa.Berkeley.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 4362; Fri, 11 Apr 97 09:10:21 PDT Received: from CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UCBCMSA) by CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 6414; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:10:13 -0700 Received: from CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU by CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU (LISTSERV release 1.8b) with NJE id 7987 for TAXACOM[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:10:08 -0700 Received: from UCBCMSA (NJE origin SMTPSERV[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UCBCMSA) by CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 6388; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:08:16 -0700 Received: from eagle.cc.ukans.edu by cmsa.Berkeley.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Fri, 11 Apr 97 09:08:11 PDT Received: from [129.237.201.199] by eagle.cc.ukans.edu; (5.65v3.2/1.1.8.2/12Jan95-0207PM) id AA06552; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:09:44 -0500 X-Sender: julian[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]eagle.cc.ukans.edu X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (16) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-ID: <3.0.1.16.19970411111007.728f3c16[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]eagle.cc.ukans.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:10:07 -0400 Reply-To: Julian Humphries Sender: Biological Systematics Discussion List From: Julian Humphries Subject: More on CODATA "Bits of Power" study To: Multiple recipients of list TAXACOM In-Reply-To: ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 17:41:38 -0500 From: Dan Goodman Subject: Gullah -- help needed This is from Stumpers-L (a list mostly for reference librarians). Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:17:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Sylvia Keys To: Pam McLaughin Cc: stumpers-list[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]crf.cuis.edu Subj: Re: ?how to learn Gullah I believe the Gullah "language" originated in or around South Carolina, and the islands nearby. Perhaps a phone book from that area, with a list of bookstores would help. I wrote a paper on the language in the 70's, if I remember correctly, most of my sources, were magazine articles. Did you try an encyclopedia? Then checking their sources? Sylvia Keys Trademark Law Library On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Pam McLaughin wrote: My patron's teacher is reading a book set on the Sea Islands to her class. Bits of the book are in Gullah. My young patron is interested in getting a book or tape on learning Gullah. I tried the Illinois state database, but found only weighty tomes that seemed to be more on the history and development of Gullah as opposed to a "Conversational Gullah in 7 Days" sorta thing. Do any East coast w*mb*ts have a hint for me? TIA Pam McLaughlin Phone: 847 566-8702 Fremont Public Library FAX: 847 566-0204 470 N. Lake St. pmclaugh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccs.nslsilus.org Mundelein, IL 60060 Dan Goodman dsgood[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]visi.com http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 22:00:27 -0400 From: TERRY IRONS Subject: Mission & Goals Recently, I have been reading some of the new material Donald Lance has included in an expanded 12th edition of Kenyon's American Speech (which should be soon available from the George Wahr Publishing Company in Ann Arbor Michigan). In addition to a brilliant "Spectrographic Analysis of English Phonemes and Allophones" supplement, Lance's chapter on "Variation in American English" is the sine que non discussion of the history of ADS' efforts to accomplish its two goals, as presented in 1889: a dialect dictionary of North America and a complete linguistic atlas of the United States and Canada. With DARE, we will see the achievement of the first goal. As we enter our second century of existence as a learned society, I would invite members and others to contribute their thoughts concerning the viability of accomplishing the second goal. What resources should be directed toward the completion of what was started in 1928? Further, what should ADS present as its goals for its next century? Virtually, Terry (*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*) Terry Lynn Irons t.irons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]morehead-st.edu Voice Mail: (606) 783-5164 Snail Mail: UPO 604 Morehead, KY 40351 (*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*) ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 10 Apr 1997 to 11 Apr 1997 ************************************************ Subject: ADS-L Digest - 12 Apr 1997 to 13 Apr 1997 There are 3 messages totalling 93 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. With friends like this... 2. Name removal 3. Variation in "try"-complements? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 23:36:52 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: With friends like this... I appreciate William Safire's "On Language" columns every Sunday in the Times. I really do. He often has a knack of providing citations illustrating precisely the construction(s) I've just been discussing in class; in today's column (4/12), for instance, his example "volunteer volunteer" (now evidently used by around the White House for what used to be called a volunteer, i.e. an unpaid aide, now that so many of the volunteers are evidently paid ones) is simultaneously a clone (a.k.a. double) and a retronym (a la "acoustic guitar", "analog watch", "biological mother"), i.e. a compound or phrase with a newly necessary modifier. BUT Safire ALSO has this to say... (quoting Jesse Sheidlower and William Kretzschmar, who I'm sure will be delighted to be mentioned a paragraph away from these remarks) "We all know that when it comes to language change, a mere running together of words, or elision, ain't nuthin' compared with an affricate, in which an explosive consonant (like p, b, and t) is followed by a fricative consonant (like th and f) to transform both into a whole new ball game. Fistfights break out in American Dialect Society meetings over whether affricates like "judge" and "church" should be considered one syllable or two, and whether blends like "gotcha" and "let's" have become grammaticalized, or fused into a unit." I certainly hope that whichever one of us was claiming that all affricates are bisyllabic, presumably the same ADSer who was maintaining that "let's" ISN'T "fused into a unit" (what else WOULD it be?), got the worst of the scuffle. Of course, this (I strongly suspect apocryphal) ADSer would have gone on record as describing the lexical items "judge" and "church" as affricates in the first place--crusin' for a bruisin', fer sure. But then I suspect phonology isn't exactly Mr. Safire's strong suit. Besides the somewhat peculiar consonants he uses to illustrate the explosive + fricative = affricate equation (-bth-? -tf-? --even cross-linguistically, not to mention just Englishly, these are, shall we say, rather marked affricate combos), there was also LAST week's column, in which the pronunciation of "seminal" as 'SEHM-uh-null' in place of the "correct" 'SEE-muh-null' was presented as an instance of "academic bowdlerization". That is, we academics for generations have been covering up the fact that 'seminal' is derived from 'semen', an instance of what we (although not he) would call taboo avoidance. Right--and we pronounce 'vanity', 'sanity', cleanliness', 'brevity', 'criminal' 'chemical', etc. etc. with initial short vowels so we can cover up the relation between these trisyllabic words and their long-voweled counterparts in vain, sane, clean, brief, crime, chemo-. In fact, the whole trisyllabic laxing business is no doubt a conspiracy on the part of insidious bowdlerizing academics to cover up our embarrassment at pronouncing 'seminal' (and 'seminar'--which I'm sure is "correctly" rendered SEE-muh-nar) with the vowel of 'semen'. --Larry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 04:27:18 -0400 From: Noel Cave Subject: Name removal Please send me the information to remove my name from this mailing list. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 14:49:03 +0000 From: Bill Spruiell <3lfyuji[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU> Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? Thus far, it seems as if there is quite a bit of variation on people's interpretations of 'try', 'remember', and 'forget' with the two complement types. One reason I raised the issue was that textbooks, specifically ESL textbooks like Azar's [a staple in many ESL grammar courses] present a nice, neat system with four verb categories and clear rules for interpreting meaning changes in category 4 (to which those verbs "belong"). Now, the last thing that would surprise me is that a pedagogical grammar covers up some variation; however, in many other cases, there's some hazily defined but *recognized*"standard" that the ignored variations are variations *to* (e.g. most prescriptive grammars don't address the "fixing to" construction, but I think most authors of them are aware of it and consciously regard it as a regional item). I'm left wondering to what extent variation with these complements has reached "pedagogical awareness", and whether textbook authors are, on this issue, *unconsciously* creating a standard rather than consciously attempting to manifest a standard they believe exists. ------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily represent those of Central Michigan U. Bill Spruiell Central Michigan University Dept. of English Language and Literature ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 12 Apr 1997 to 13 Apr 1997 ************************************************ Subject: ADS-L Digest - 13 Apr 1997 to 14 Apr 1997 There are 7 messages totalling 249 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. "College Widow" (from Union College!); another "Old College Try" 2. Tom Collins (an alcoholic drink) 3. Variation in "try"-complements? 4. With friends like this... 5. Hoosier (2) 6. Melungeon once more ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 01:51:54 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: "College Widow" (from Union College!); another "Old College Try" COLLEGE WIDOW: Another OED antedate--just scribble this in them there margins. The Cornell Widow (Ithaca, NY) is one of the greatest college humor magazines, and one of the first. I believe 1896 was its first year. It helped me with "hot dog" and many other slang items. I'd always wanted, of course, to solve the "college widow." RHDAS has: 1900 DNII 29: _College-widow_, n. A girl new men meet from year to year but whom no one every marries. 1934 Weseen _Dict. Slang_ 177: _College widow_--A noncollege girl or woman who flirts with students. This misses, obviously, the Cornell Widow (1896-). It also misses OED, which has: COLLEGE WIDOW, _U.S. colloq._ (see quot.) 1887 _Lippincott's Mag._ Aug. 298 That class of young ladies known among the students as "college widows," and commonly supposed to have the acquaintance of several generations of collegians. I was looking for "color line" in 1874, when by accident I found--no, I knew it was there all along and it was a stroke of genius!! Anyway, this is from the New Orleans Picayune, 13 August 1874, pg. 4, col. 1: In Schenectady the girls who are "left" by the college students are called "college widows." THE WAY WE WERE was filmed at Union College in Schenectady. I wonder what Barbra Streisand has to say about this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- OLD COLLEGE TRY: Willard Mullin has a cartoon of "The Old College Try" in the NY World-Telegram, 16 June 1939, pg. 24. A galley master is whipping a rowing team into shape. I was, of course, looking for the Brooklyn bum at the time. Directly above "college widow" in RHDAS is "college try," and this entry is also wrong. The first entry should NOT be from the July 18, 1927 NY Sun. This was, indeed, the first entry in the April 1930 American Speech article, but the second entry in that article, from the 26 November 1927 Columbus (Ohio) Citizen, is the correct citation. Glad to be of help. I hope this counts toward my final grade. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 02:52:19 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Tom Collins (an alcoholic drink) Who is Tom Collins?? WHAT'S IN A NAME? by Paul Dickson (1996) says, on page 102, "A 19th-century bartender who worked at Limmer's Old House in London." Robert Hendrickson's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORD AND PHRASE ORIGINS has: TOM COLLINS. Many sources tell us that the _Tom Collins_--that refreshing, tall drink made with gin (or vermouth), lemon (or lime), sugar, and soda water--honors its bartender-creator. Yet no one has been able to establish who Tom Collins was, where he came from, or when he first mixed the drink. Variations on the Tom Collins include the _John Collins_ (whiskey) and the _Marimba Collins (rum). The Tom Collins is claimed by many, but the lack of evidence indicates that its real creator didn't mix well, at least socially. The best prospect is probably John Collins, a 19th-century bartender at London's Limmer Hotel who did not devise but was famous for his gin sling--a tall gin and lemon drink that resembles the Tom Collins. This repeats H. L. Mencken's AMERICAN LANGUAGE, SUPPLEMENT I, pg. 254. The first citation in the DAE is 1909. OED has this item under "Collins" (first entry is 1944) and "Tom Collins." Under the latter is: 1888 H. JOHNSON _New Improved Bartenders Man._ (rev. ed.) 227 *Tom Collins. I was looking for, well, "color line," when I found two traces of the guy. 7 July 1874, Atlanta Constitution, pg. 3, cols. 3-5. A cartoon shows four figures, all men out to club or shoot somebody. Below is: WHERE IS TOM COLLINS? ANSWER--Why, he left by the Great Kennesaw Route, with a Round Trip Ticket to New York, which he purchased for ONLY $37, and the schedule is so fast and connections so sure, you fellows can never catch him. 5 June 1874, New Orleans Picayune, pg. 1, col. 6: His Name it was Tom Collins. The Tom Collins hoax was inaugurated here by a very laughable episode in which a noted man about town, C-- was made to play a prominent part. A party of friends, on the invitation of C--, adjourned to No. 1 1/2 for a long drink, when a friend of C's entered quickly and called him aside--"Look here, old fellow, I was taking a drink just now at Andy Parle's, when I overheard an individual denouncing you in the vilest manner. He said you loafed on your friends, borowed money and never returned it, owed bills in every quarter of the city, and were the biggest beat he knew. I inquired who he was and he gave his name as Tom Collins. He is to be found at Parle's." C-- never doubting for an instant the truth of this statement so seriously made, darted off with two friends, armed himself with revolver and knife, and went in quest of Tom Collins. He visited Parle's; Tom Collins had just left for Alf. Custer's; he followed him there to find he had just gone to the Phoenix, from thence to the Green Room, and thence to Hawkin's. That morning, J. C---, a noted railroad man, had just come in from Kansas. His friends, in order to express their appreciation of his companionship, gave him a big dinner, and about eight o'clock that evening he entered Hawkins's, dressed in an Indian costume he had brought with him, and a little the better for his dinner. He was engaged in showing a circle of admiring friends how to dance after the fashion of the Indians, when the party seeking Tom Collins entered. "Is there a man here by the name of Tom Collins?" inquired C--, addressing his question to the bar-keeper. "Yes, sir, there he is," rejoined the bartender, pointing to J. C--. C. approached the strangely arrayed savage, and said, "Are you Tom Collins?" "Yes, sir, that's my name, les ta' a drink." "Then, sir, I have to inform you that you are a lying scoundrel." "Do you wa-n-t to-o-o f-ig-ht?" replied the Indian, putting himself in position, and taking an arrow from his belt and sticking it in the floor. "My na-a-a-me i-i-s To-o-o-m Corrins, led's ta-a a drink." This conduct on the part of the conductor, who knew nothing of the hoax, but, like a drunken man, answered to the first name he was accosted by, his peculiar costume, and almost helpless condition, all contributed to appease C., who begat to smell a mouse. He expressed his surmise to his friends, and they consulted the bar keeper, who explained the whole affair to the infinite amusement of all concerned. A round of drinks followed and were scarcely discussed when in rushed a second individual who wanted Tom Collins. "Is Tom Collins here?" he excitedly inquired. "Yes--by Gravy! thas me-e-e-e n-a-me. Do you wa-a-nt to fight? Les ta-ake a drink." This last individual was rather more desperate than C. was inclined to be, and was about to strike J. C. with a cane when his friends interposed and explained the matter. He then started off to find the author of the joke he had been made the butt of. The last seen of the befuscated conductor he was being carried off by his friends, murmuring to himself as he passed along, "Yes, by Gravy, me-e-e na-a-me's Tom Collins." The drink probably started soon thereafter. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 10:35:13 -0500 From: Wayne Glowka Subject: Re: Variation in "try"-complements? >Wayne, > >The different senses I got were for the first, that here I am in the middle >of the freeway and damn! I forgot to lock the door, I hope no one breaks >in. The second seems as if it could be I forgot whether or not I locked >the door, or I don't have a clear memory of having locked the door, or I >lock the door so automatically that I forgot locking it and so you couldn't >get out until you called for help. Any clearer? > >Of course, I usually only get to check e-mail at night, so maybe it's just >that it's late. > >Rima No, but thanks anyway. Wayne Glowka ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:04:05 EDT From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: With friends like this... Thanks for your comments. I agree entirely; in fact the same class of mine I referred to in my message (the one in which we've been discussing retronyms and clones of the "volunTEER volunteer" variety) we've just gotten through discuss- ing the chapter you mention, Pinker on "The Language Mavens" re Safire et al. In fact I took the occasion of their having read Pinker's exigesis of the Barbra Streisand line to get my undergraduates to come up with their own similar deconstruction of Safire's 4/6 column on "SEH-muh-null" as taboo avoidance. At the same time, I (like Pinker) do get more out of reading Safire than out of reading most of his ilk; he doesn't always condemn new usage out of hand, he often comes up with interesting examples and cites--al- though I grant that all too often he speaks with unearned authority and with an often careless and sometimes insulting disregard of previous scholarship on particular issues--cf. inter all too many alia his coverage of NOT! back in March '92, when he cited a syndicated column by Linda Shrieves of the Orlando Sentinel without bothering to track down the linguists Shrieves cited, or his various "discoveries" of lexical and grammatical constructions some of us have spent many years analyzing and writing about. But despite his carelessness, he does have a love for language as a vibrant entity and for speakers as creative sources of innovation, which in itself distinguishes Safire from the Edwin Newmans and John Simons who seem to be interested in nothing more than standing on their soapboxes to shout out the imminent destruction of English (and to blame the permissivism of the sixties for this demise). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 16:55:59 -0500 From: "Timothy C. Frazer" Subject: Re: Hoosier Raven McDavid had a paper on the origins of Hoosier. I think its in the volume Bill K. edited. Tim Frazer ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 18:34:28 EDT From: Terry Lynn Irons Subject: Re: Hoosier McDavid & McDavid's article on hoosier and cracker is to be found in either volume 21 or volume 22 of _Names_ (1973-74). -- Virtually, Terry (*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*) Terry Lynn Irons t.irons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]morehead-st.edu Voice Mail: (606) 783-5164 Snail Mail: UPO 604 Morehead, KY 40351 (*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*)=(*) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 22:01:45 -0400 From: "David Bergdahl (614) 593-2783" Subject: Melungeon once more In today's (4-14-97) Wall St Journal pp b-1 & b4 there's an article by a staff reporter "Appalachian Clan Mines Web Sites for Ancestral Clues." In short, he favors the Portugese ancestry for these WINs. Of interest to us, perhaps, are the web resources mentioned: a web site http://www.uky.edu/RGS/Appal-Center and a mailing list MELUNGEON[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]rmgate.pop.indiana.edu ________________________________________________________________________ david.bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ohiou.edu tel: (614) 593-2783 fax: (614) 593-2818 Ohio University/Athens "Where Appalachia meets the Midwest"--Anya Briggs ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 13 Apr 1997 to 14 Apr 1997 ************************************************ From - Tue Apr 15 22:17:40 1997 Received: from acs1.byu.edu by alaska.et.byu.edu; Tue, 15 Apr 1997 22:01:42 -0600 (MDT) Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by yvax.byu.edu (PMDF V5.1-8 #16477) id <01IHR085MC0G003D4A[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yvax.byu.edu> for lilliek[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]et.byu.edu; Tue, 15 Apr 1997 22:00:40 MDT Received: from listmail.cc.uga.edu ("port 3402"[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]listmail.cc.uga.edu) by yvax.byu.edu (PMDF V5.1-8 #16477) with ESMTP id <01IHR081XI6W0031VW[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yvax.byu.edu> for DianeL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]byu.edu; Tue, 15 Apr 1997 22:00:36 -0600 (MDT) Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by listmail.cc.uga.edu (LSMTP for Windows NT v1.1a) with SMTP id <0.32B61790[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]listmail.cc.uga.edu>; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 00:00:30 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.2c/1.8c) with BSMTP id 6256; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 00:00:03 -0400 Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 00:00:00 -0400 X-UIDL: 861164130.001 From: Automatic digest processor Subject: ADS-L Digest - 14 Apr 1997 to 15 Apr 1997 Sender: American Dialect Society To: Recipients of ADS-L digests Reply-to: American Dialect Society Message-id: <01IHR0826Z560031VW[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yvax.byu.edu> Status: U X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 12558 There are 4 messages totalling 341 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Melungeon once more 2. DSNA registration phone 3. DSNA registration 4. Hoosier ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 12:56:43 +0900 From: Daniel Long Subject: Re: Melungeon once more FYI, address should apparently have no hyphen as below. http://www.uky.edu/RGS/AppalCenter/ David Bergdahl (614) 593-2783 wrote: > In today's (4-14-97) Wall St Journal pp b-1 & b4 there's an article by a staff > reporter "Appalachian Clan Mines Web Sites for Ancestral Clues." In short, he > favors the Portugese ancestry for these WINs. Of interest to us, perhaps, are > the web resources mentioned: a web site http://www.uky.edu/RGS/Appal-Center and > a mailing list MELUNGEON[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]rmgate.pop.indiana.edu (Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor Japanese Language Research Center Osaka Shoin Women's College 4-2-26 Hishiyanishi Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577 tel and fax +81-6-729-1831 email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 08:31:26 -0500 From: Luanne von Schneidemesser Subject: DSNA registration phone I am sorry to bother this list with this information. Please bear with us. Would those of you calling Lowell Hall for accomodations for the DSNA conference please note that the phone number you should call is (608) 256-2621, not the one listed in the materials sent out. (And yes, Ron, they have a pool.) Luanne __________________ Luanne von Schneidemesser Dictionary of American Regional English University of Wisconsin-Madison 6129 H.C. White Hall 600 N. Park St. Madison WI 53706 (608) 263-2748 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 09:04:02 -0500 From: Luanne von Schneidemesser Subject: DSNA registration I just received another message about not having received registration materials for the DSNA conference. I apologize. It is out of our hands. We have been assured that it has been taken care of. To assist with the problem, I am including them here. For those of you not interested, please delete this message. **************************************************************************** ********** Dictionary of American Regional English =20 Department of English E-mail: d-a-r-e[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]facstaff.wisc.edu University of Wisconsin Telephone: 608-263-3810 6125 Helen C. White Hall Fax: 608-263-3709 600 North Park Street = =20 Madison, Wisconsin 53706 =20 March 4, 1997 Dear DSNA Member: Enclosed you will find registration and housing materials for DSNA XI, the Eleventh Biennial Meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America.=20 The conference will take place May 29-31, 1997 (with participants arriving on Wednesday, May 28), on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Meetings will be held in the Wisconsin Center Guest House (Lowell Hall), at 610 Langdon Street, where a block of rooms has been reserved. Other housing options are also described on the enclosed page. You should make housing reservations directly with the accommodation you choose. DSNA rates for reservations are guaranteed only until April 28 (see Housing enclosure). Please return your= registration form to us by May 1. In addition to an interesting array of papers, the program offers a= reception in the Department of Special Collections of Memorial Library, where an exhibit of early dictionaries will be on display; a traditional Wisconsin picnic (described below); a visit to DARE offices, for any who are interested; and a public forum on DARE following the scheduled papers. Transportation to Madison: Airline service to the Dane Co. Regional Airport is provided by American, Midway Express, Northwest, TWA, and United, or their commuter links. There is very good, frequent bus service (every 1-2 hours) from Chicago's O'Hare Airport provided by the Van Galder Bus Company ($18 one way, 3 hours to the UW Memorial Union, about a block from Lowell Hall; call(800) 747-0994 for a schedule); Greyhound buses are less frequent, with the station several blocks from Lowell Hall (call (800) 231-2222 or www.greyhound.com); Badger Coach provides bus service from Milwaukee's Mitchell Field Airport, 2 hours to the Memorial Union (call (608) 255-6771 or www.badgerbus.com). =20 If you are staying at the Edgewater and provide them with your flight number and time of arrival, hotel staff will pick you up at the airport free= of charge. There are taxis available at the airport to take you to the other accommodations for about $12-$14, or you may rent a car at the airport; if you will need parking, please inform your hotel.=20 In your registration packet you will find further information, including a= list of restaurants (Madison is blessed with an abundance of good ones of all types, many within walking distance of Lowell Hall), a list of participants, the final program, and a campus map. You may pick up these materials in the lobby of Lowell Hall on Wednesday, May 28, from 3:00-8:00 p.m., or after 7:30 a.m. on Thursday. Plan to meet on the Union Terrace with other conference participants Wednesday evening if you would like; some of us will be there starting at 6:00 p.m. for informal conversation and refreshments. =20 Conference information will also be posted on DARE's homepage sometime in April. This is a good opportunity to check out our page if you haven't yet done so: the address is polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html.= =20 The University's homepage can be found at wiscinfo.wisc.edu. A search of the Net will also yield information on Madison and Dane County. We look forward to seeing you in May. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us at the address or phone number on the letterhead.=20 Please let us know if you will need any special accommodations.=20 Beginning the afternoon of May 28th, the conference telephone number will be (608) 262-6204. Sincerely, Joan Hall Luanne von Schneidemesser P.S. Those who can come early or stay late will find plenty of places to visit. They include Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin in nearby Spring Green; the Wisconsin Dells; the Circus World Museum and the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo; Devil's Lake State Park; Old World Wisconsin in Eagle; New Glarus, known as "Little Switzerland"; Pendarvis at Mineral Point. Or stay in Madison and enjoy the museums, the UW Arboretum, the State Capitol, State Street, the campus, and the shores of Lake Mendota (no visit to Madison is complete without a stop at the Memorial Union Terrace).=20 _____________________________________________________ Traditional Wisconsin Picnic Door County is the "thumb" of Wisconsin, a peninsula of farming and fishing communities jutting into Lake Michigan. It is the home of the Wisconsin Fishboil, a century-old tradition that combines good food with dramatic excitement: a fire is built in a pit; the water boils; the= potatoes, onions, and whitefish steaks cook to perfection. Listen for the bell! Then watch as a spectacular, fiery flare-up causes the cauldron to boil over and quench the fire below. Along with the whitefish stew, enjoy another Wisconsin tradition, grilled bratwurst ("brats," to those in the know).=20 These flavorful sausages are a must at any Madison picnic. For those who prefer vegetarian alternatives, we offer other local specialties,= Cheese-state Quiche and Wisconsin Garden Gazpacho. All of these entr=82es will be accompanied by salads, rye rolls, tea breads made with Wisconsin fruits and nuts, and of course, Door County's famous cherry pie. Wisconsin micro-brewery beer as well as wine, lemonade, and iced tea will be served with the meal. Please indicate on the registration form the number of tickets you would like, and enclose payment with your registration fee. ******************************************************** Housing Conference participants will need to make their own reservations for= housing. =20 DSNA group rates have been arranged at the places listed below, and are=20 guaranteed until April 28. After that the group rate can't be guaranteed,= =20 but will be honored if there are still rooms available. Be sure to mention= =20 DSNA when you make your reservations. Conference rates are good Wednesday through Saturday night. LOWELL HALL =20 (Wisconsin Center Guest House, site of the meeting) 610 Langdon St. Madison, WI 53706 (608) 256-2621 $48 single $54 double $58 triple $64 parents + 2 kids Breakfast included Free parking; make arrangements when you reserve your room check-in: 3 PM check-out: 11 AM __________________________________________________________ MADISON INN (across the street from Lowell Hall) 601 Langdon St. Madison, WI 53703 (608) 257-4391 $49 single $54 double No charge for kids under 16, extra $5 for others Continental breakfast included Free parking check-in: 2 PM check-out: noon _________________________________________________________ THE EDGEWATER (ca 4 blocks from Lowell Hall) 666 Wisconsin Ave. Madison, WI 53703 (608) 256-9071 or (800) 922-5512 $79 lakeview (single or double) $129 lakefront (single or double) No charge for kids in room with parents Free parking check-in: 3 PM check-out: noon _______________________________________________________ OGG HALL (UW dormitory, 5 blocks from Lowell Hall) 716 W. Dayton St. Madison, WI 53706 Call UW Housing (608) 262-5576 $33.25 single $21.00 (per person) double For parking permits at a nearby lot, call (608) 262-8683 by April 28. Parking options $5 to $7 per day, and must be paid in advance. check-in: noon check-out: noon Linens and maid service provided ******************************************************** REGISTRATION FORM Dictionary Society of North America XI at the=20 University of Wisconsin-Madison NAME:______________________________________________________________ ADDRESS:___________________________________________________________ CITY:________________ STATE:_______ ZIP:___________ COUNTRY:___________ TELEPHONE NUMBER(S):_______________________________________________ E-MAIL:______________________________________________________________ Name Tag Information Name:__________________________________________ Affiliation: ________________________________________ Registration Fee: ($35.00)...........................................................= $________ Traditional Wisconsin Picnic tickets:______ [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] $25.00 each $________ =20 Total: ............................................................................ ..................... $________ Recommended arrival time: Wednesday, May 28th, 1997. Make check payable to: Dictionary of American Regional English=20 =20 and send to: DARE/DSNA Conference 6125 H. C. White Hall 600 N. Park Street Madison, WI 53706 Please return this form by May 1, 1997. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 18:02:20 -0700 From: Peter Richardson Subject: Re: Hoosier Mencken's American Language cites references to a "whoosher," but admits that that seems far-fetched. Then: "Beyond North America, the most reliable etymology connects it with hoozer, a Cumberland dialect term applied to 'anything unusually large.'" There's a gap there somewhere, maybe a Cumberland one. Peter Richardson ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 14 Apr 1997 to 15 Apr 1997 ************************************************ Subject: ADS-L Digest - 15 Apr 1997 to 16 Apr 1997 There are 16 messages totalling 526 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Grand Slam/Gotcha!/In God We Trust/Hoosier/Yankees 2. hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ (8) 3. appropriation of pejoratives (aka "taking ownership") 4. A little humor (2) 5. plea for advice (4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 01:55:14 -0400 From: "Barry A. Popik" Subject: Grand Slam/Gotcha!/In God We Trust/Hoosier/Yankees GRAND SLAM "We are a grand slam society." --President Clinton, Shea Stadium, 15 April 1997 The term comes from bridge. I sure hope he wasn't alluding to playing all the tricks. Paul Dickson's BASEBALL DICTIONARY has the first citation from the Peter Tamony file, 20 August 1940 in the San Francisco News. "Evidence that this term did not come into use until 1940 can be found in the fact that it was _not_ mentioned in Edward J. Nichols' 1939 thesis on baseball language," Dickson writes. OED has it under "slam" and has 1953 for baseball, 1933 for military, and 1814 for bridge. I couldn't find a pre-1940 citation, and what I did find confirms "grand slam" was not used. Perhaps I missed it, but the earliest Sporting News citation was 23 September 1941, pg. 13, col. 7, "GRAND-SLAM HOMER SINKS DODGERS." On 20 December 1934, pg. 5, cols. 2-3, the Sporting News headline reads "Home Runs With Bases Loaded." On 16 May 1940, pg. 3, col. 3, a cartoon character declares "Gosh, how I'd like ta knock homers an' triples with th' bags loaded all th' time on them Yankees!" On 24 April 1939, NY World-Telegram, pg. 16, the cartoon "Hazy Daisy" in the upper right hand corner of the page has a newspaper that reads "SID LUCKMAN HITS HOMER WITH BASES FULL." The Grand Slam quest continues, but it ain't there much before 1940. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- GOTCHA! I think Safire's column missed this. Check out David Crystal's THE CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1995), pg. 275, for a nice explanation of "gotcha." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- IN GOD WE TRUST The best source of materials on this is somewhere under my bed. Trust me. I cannot do a full treatment now! I think there's an anaconda under there! Safire refers to this in today's Op-Ed piece, but incredibly leaves out "The Star-Spangled Banner," which has "In God Is Our Trust" at the end of its fourth stanza. Safire writes: "Didn't Lincoln, at the insistence of his devout Treasury Secretary, order 'In God We Trust' to appear on coins and greenbacks?" Well, no. Coins, yes. It was used on the eagle ($10 gold piece), the double eagle ($20 gold piece), the half eagle ($5 gold piece), the silver dollar, the half dollar, and the quarter. Greenbacks came about 1956, when Lincoln was long dead. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- HOOSIER I made an extensive posting on this January 1, 1997 on ADS-L. No one made a single comment. Did no one read it? My pile on "Hoosier" is probably the best there is anywhere. In that posting, I uncovered five pre-1833 citations. Because of the references to "hoosier bait," I concluded that "hoosier" was something large--a big fish. I distinctly eliminated "Who's yer." So why is this coming up again???? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ YANKEES A new book about the New York Yankees (containing 1996 World Series info) is out by Jay David. He states that they were called "Yankees" about 1908. I solved this last year. I traced it to April 1904 in William Randolph Hearst's NY EVENING JOURNAL, in a sports section edited by Harry Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe's grandnephew). It was also published in COMMENTS ON ETYMOLOGY. I sent it to the Mayor of New York City, who never wrote back. I was never invited to the Yankees parade at City Hall. I was somewhere way in the back, crying. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:11:21 -0400 From: "(Dale F. Coye)" Subject: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ I watched a fourth grade play yesterday in which the teacher had taught the children to enunciate clearly, which often means they're supposed to aspirate words spelled t wherever they occur (a practice I abhor because it doesn't sound like Am. Eng. anymore). So words like letter, better, getting all had aspirated t. I felt a certain sense of triumph when one girl also used one in "shadow." This reminds me of a friend who pronounced Beethoven with a voiced flap, and as I think about it, it seems that in that word the normal (for me) aspirated t is really quite unique when not after a morpheme boundary (pretext, pretense). Are there any other intervocalic aspirate Ts? Dale Coye Princeton, NJ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 17:04:00 -0500 From: Mark Mandel Subject: appropriation of pejoratives (aka "taking ownership") THE FOLLOWING APPEARED IN LINGUIST #8.502. PLEASE D O N O T REPLY TO ME! Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:08:32 -0400 From: Subject: Appropriation of derogatory terms Dear Colleagues- A student of mine is interested in the appropriation of degrogatory terms by groups which the terms are used against. An example of this would be the use of the word by the homosexual rights group . Can anyone direct us to work which has been done on this subject? We will, of course, summarize your responses. Thanks, Bob Williams Saint Micheal's College From: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:37:50 -0400 From: Jules Levin Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ At 01:11 PM 4/16/97 -0400, you wrote: >I watched a fourth grade play yesterday in which the teacher had taught the >children to enunciate clearly, which often means they're supposed to aspirate >words spelled t wherever they occur (a practice I abhor because it doesn't >sound like Am. Eng. anymore). So words like letter, better, getting all had >aspirated t. I felt a certain sense of triumph when one girl also used one >in "shadow." > >This reminds me of a friend who pronounced Beethoven with a voiced flap, and >as I think about it, it seems that in that word the normal (for me) aspirated >t is really quite unique when not after a morpheme boundary (pretext, >pretense). Are there any other intervocalic aspirate Ts? > I think that stresses play a critical role. For some speakers/dialects (?) /t/ is flapped only before an unstressed syllable. ('atom') At the other end, everyone aspirates between unstressed and fully stressed: ('attend') Compare the two t's in 'attitude'. In between there are variations. With two unreduced vowels I generally do not have a flap, e.g., in 'atoll' I venture a guess that your friend also reduces the 'o' in Beethoven to a schwa. I once had a student in a ling class transcribe 'hotdog' as [h'ad[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]g] When I checked, sure enuf that's how she pronounced it. By the way, similar variation exists when /t/ is followed by an /n/: In my original Chicago dialect I had a full aspirated [t] in 'enter' etc., but here is SoCal one hardly ever hears it. I sometimes think there is a vestigial flap after the /n/, but it is hard to hear. The minimal pair for most speakers would be 'enter' and 'inner' and they seem to have merged. Jules Levin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:06:19 CST From: Ellen Johnson Subject: A little humor This is irrelevant here but, hey, go ahead and flame me! It was sent to me by someone at WKU, but I notice Duane's name at the bottom, coincidentally. Ellen >>> Q: How many internet mail list subscribers does it take >>> to change a light bulb? > >>> >>> A: 1,331: >>> 1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail >>> list that the light bulb has been changed >>> 14 to share similar experiences of changing light >>> bulbs and how the light bulb could have been >>> changed differently. >>> 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs. >>> 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about >>> changing light bulbs. >>> 53 to flame the spell checkers >>> 156 to write to the list administrator complaining about >>> the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness >>> to this mail list. >>> 41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames. >>> 109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and >>> to please take this email exchange to alt.lite.bulb >>> 203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, >>> alt.spelling and alt.punctuation about changing >>> light bulbs be stopped. >>> 111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we >>> are all use light bulbs and therefore the posts >>> **are** relevant to this mail list. >>> 306 to debate which method of changing light >>> bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, >>> what brand of light bulbs work best for this >>> technique, and what brands are faulty. >>> 27 to post URLs where one can see examples of >>> different light bulbs >>> 14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and >>> to post corrected URLs. >>> 3 to post about links they found from the URLs that >>> are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs >>> relevant to this list. >>> 33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote >>> them including all headers and footers, and then >>> add "Me Too." >>> 12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing >>> because they cannot handle the light bulb >>> controversey. >>> 19 to quote the "Me Too's" to say, "Me Three." >>> 4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ. >>> 1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup. >>> 47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion >>> was meant for, leave it here. >>> 143 votes for alt.lite.bulb. >>> >> > > >Duane Campbell dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]epix.net >http://www.epix.net/~dcamp/ > Received: from axp1.wku.edu by INETGW.WKU.EDU (SMTPLINK V2.11 PreRelease 4) ; Wed, 16 Apr 97 11:35:55 CST Return-Path: Received: from HOST1.SWOSU.EDU by axp1.wku.edu (MX V4.3 Alpha) with SMTP; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:35:46 CDT Received: from [164.58.37.41] by 164.58.37.41 with SMTP; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:35:26 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender: nadels[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]host1.swosu.edu Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:37:25 -0500 To: jrbarret[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, kanthony[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, vburton[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ncsa.uiuc.edu, m-leff[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu, "Ronald P. Toby" From: Richard Jensen (by way of nadels[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]host1.swosu.edu (Stan Nadel)) Subject: A little humor ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:33:14 -0400 From: Beverly Flanigan Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ The use of aspirated /t/ in "better" etc. is commonly taught by Language Arts teachers like those I have in an evening class; they insist that it is their "duty" (flapped, of course, in their own natural speech) to teach kids how to enunciate "properly," and they feel personally attacked when I tell them it's not normal or necessary. But alas, I have a Linguistics colleague who also says [bEt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]r]. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:58:16 -0400 From: Daniel Ezra Johnson Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ On Wed, 16 Apr 1997, Jules Levin wrote: > The minimal pair for most speakers would be > 'enter' and 'inner' and they seem to have merged. > > Jules Levin > Does that mean So. Cal has that southern thang where "ten" and "tin" are identical? For me, from the Northeast, the Internet could just as well be spelled Innernet (with a truly miniscule distinction, if any) but certainly not Enternet. DEJ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 16:16:45 -0400 From: Marie Nigro Subject: Re: A little humor Thought you's enjoy this one. And Fred says thanks (arf). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:18:51 -0700 From: Peter Richardson Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ > > The minimal pair for most speakers would be > > 'enter' and 'inner' and they seem to have merged. > > Does that mean So. Cal has that southern thang where "ten" and "tin" are > identical? Well, maybe. But _enter_ prob'ly turns out more like "enner," as in _ennertainment_. > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 17:21:55 -0400 From: Jules Levin Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ At 02:58 PM 4/16/97 -0400, you wrote: >> The minimal pair for most speakers would be >> 'enter' and 'inner' and they seem to have merged. > >Does that mean So. Cal has that southern thang where "ten" and "tin" are >identical? > >For me, from the Northeast, the Internet could just as well be spelled >Innernet (with a truly miniscule distinction, if any) but certainly not >Enternet. I'm afraid it does mean that. This does not seem to be a complete merger like cot and caught, but for many many young speakers at least pairs like pin and pen are homophones. By the way, Allan Metcalf noted this in his 'Riverside English', published here 25 years ago when we were still priviledged to have him working here. Jules Levin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 18:18:06 -0400 From: Peggy Smith Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ I heard the pin/pen merger for the first time when I moved to Henry County, Georgia from New Jersey. It was my first real encounter with Southern speech. I am a teacher, and students said safety pin, bobby pin, stick pin (thumb tack), and ink pin. I now teach in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Whenever I hear a student ask another for an ink pin, I ask where he spends his summers. Invariably, there is a grandmother in Mississippi or cousins in Georgia. Peggy Smith ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 15:46:41 -0700 From: Peter Richardson Subject: plea for advice This coming fall I'll be teaching a freshman writing (English) course for the first time, and I'd like some advice from all (or some) of you out there. I'll preface this by saying that I've been teaching for 33 years, but it has been in modern/medieval languages, and I've never had the joy of teaching English. Now that our college has adopted a new curriculum that spreads responsibility for Freshman English among the faculty, this is about to change. Mercifully, we get to choose our topic, and I have declared that I will teach a course called "Language Matters." (That second word is both verb and noun.) I intend to touch on many subjects, as you will see from the following, but I have no idea how to go about choosing a text--or texts--and opine that I might just have to put together a "reader." Any suggestions? Thanks very much in advance! Peter Richardson Linfield College / Oregon Language Matters will inquire into the nature of language through its use in the United States today. It will examine: a. history the influence of other languages on the development of the emerging American idiom; the role of dialects as a source of constant renewal for American English; the role of folk song and speech in defining our collective sense of nation. b. current issues Black English; the presence of minority languages (Puerto Rican Spanish, Cajun French, Haitian Creole, etc.) within the greater English-speaking population; language politics, language planning, and the English Only movement; the political, economic, and social functions of a standard language; hate speech; additional topics (jargon, argot, onomastics) as time permits. Central to our investigations and discussions will be the premise that language indeed does matter. Whatever its context may be, it fosters or hinders human relationships and must be used carefully. Students will practice writing with different voices (e.g. letter to the editor, tour brochure, assembly instructions, membership solicitation, broadside) and playing the roles in class that they have had to assume in their assignments. A portfolio of the term's written work will determine two-thirds of the course grade. One-third of the grade will be based on class participation. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 18:15:35 -0500 From: Gregory Pulliam Subject: Re: plea for advice >Central to our investigations and discussions will be the premise that >language indeed does matter. Whatever its context may be, it fosters or >hinders human relationships and must be used carefully. Must it ALWAYS "be used carefully"? Can't we sometime just thro it aroun like issa big ol' beach ball bouncin' in the grandstand of humanity? Greg Pulliam gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]charlie.iit.edu Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 16:35:34 -0700 From: Peter Richardson Subject: Re: plea for advice > >hinders human relationships and must be used carefully. > > Must it ALWAYS "be used carefully"? Can't we sometime just thro it aroun > like issa big ol' beach ball bouncin' in the grandstand of humanity? You betcha. And I take what you just wrote as careful--knowledgeable--use of the language for a specific purpose. This isn't exactly the equivalent of the haberdasher's "sloppy chic" (I know that's not the term, but the real one eludes me at the moment), but you have to be able to use the language well to misuse it well... I had, by the way, thought of using either a volume of the DARE or the first volume of the Random House Hist. Dict. of American Slang, thinking the students would at least have something in hand that they wouldn't want to sell back to the bookstore at the end of the term. But then I don't have any experience using either of these as a single text for entry-level students. So I still need that advice, Colleagues! PR ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 20:31:49 -0500 From: Ditra Henry Subject: Re: plea for advice I have a book suggestion. I use this book in a Freshman seminar ESL class on critical thinking. However most of my students will be going into Freshman English after my course. I somewhat modify the book for them because it is written with natice speakers in mind. The name of the text is Encountering Cultures : Reading and writing ina Changing World, Second Edition by Richard Holeton. It is a Pretince Hall Title. The book, per back cover, is a composition reader that explores issues of language and culture, domestic cultural diversity, and global cultural diversity with a range of authors and viewpoints. I like the book because it is broken down into sections like Langugae and Gender and has essays by such people as Deborah Tannen, Amy Tan,Sandra Cisneros,James Baldwin,Noam Chomsky,Alice Walker, Valeriae Matsumoto and many more. There is even a section on Sexual Orientation and Diversity. Take a peek at it I think it's very up to date and I'm in the process of referring this book to a Professor on our campus because we are experimenting with a Freshman Writing Class and Language and Behavior, linguistic course that work hand in hand;in other words the two professors will coordinate their curriculums to reinforce concepts and assignments. Ditra B. Henry Northeastern Illinois University Chicago, IL ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 12:45:11 +0900 From: Daniel Long Subject: Re: hypercorrect intervocalic /t/ In my native (West Tennessee) dialect we can keep at least some of our intervocalic /t/s and /d/s straight by splitting a phoneme. So we can tell if someone is talking about a /rAId[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]r/ who pens books, and a /rAd[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]r/ who straddles a horse or a motorcycle. (I hope my keyboard phonetics are close enough that you can figure them out.) This is the source of confusion when we deal with speakers from farther north who use the diphthong for both, or from farther south who use the monophthong for both. By the way, it isn't a /t/ problem, but there is hypercorrection in a Platter*s song where they "restore" word-final /nd/ consonant clusters that weren't consonant clusters in the first place. It's in "Only You". The line goes "only you cand make (etc., etc.)" Danny Long (Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor Japanese Language Research Center Osaka Shoin Women's College 4-2-26 Hishiyanishi Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577 tel and fax +81-6-729-1831 email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm ------------------------------ End of ADS-L Digest - 15 Apr 1997 to 16 Apr 1997 ************************************************