From: Automatic digest processor (5/2/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 30 Apr 1998 to 1 May 1998              98-05-02 00:00:34
There are 7 messages totalling 295 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Paralegal (Shapiro, 1970)
  2. New Yorker
  3.  No subject given 
  4. NWAV(E) 27 Call for Papers
  5. paralegal (2)
  6. Hello! Hello!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 01:10:58 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Re: Paralegal (Shapiro, 1970)

    I checked another database and found these:

GENERAL PARALEGAL SKILLS (1969), serial by the Professional Development
Program of the State Bar of Texas.

LAW OFFICE USE OF PARALEGAL PERSONNEL (1970) by the Continuing Legal Education
Division of the South Carolina Bar Association.

NEW CAREERS IN LAW, II, CONFERENCE REPORT (1972), Conference on Paralegals in
the United States (1971, University of Denver), by the Special Committee on
Legal Assistants of the American Bar Association.
     The "notes" on the computer entry include:  "Report on a survey of
paralegal training in the United States...begun and concluded by the
administration of justice program of the University of Denver College of Law
in 1970."

(Sorry for "an Philadelphia lawyer."  It was "an attorney" until changed in
mid-sentence.)

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 02:42:10 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: New Yorker

     What do you call a person from New York?
     THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW YORK CITY (1995) has this on page 1242:

_Washington, George_ (...)  The earliest known use of the term "New Yorker" in
a published work is contained in a letter that he wrote in 1756.

      I always thought that this was odd.  Yes, presidents can popularize
words and phrases (like FDR's "United Nations")--but this was a PRIVATE
letter, not intended for mass readership, sent over a generation BEFORE he
became President. I believed he got undue credit for "New Yorker" because he
later became such a famous New Yorker (the first Presidential inauguration,
George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, Washington Square Park at NYU) and
because, well, what other letters does one read from 1756??
      The letter can be found in WRITINGS, Vol. 1, "TO JOHN ROBINSON," 5
August 1756.  On page 315 is "the Jerseys and New Yorkers."
       This comes up now because I've just submitted something to THE NEW
YORKER magazine.  I wrote up my February 28th lecture before the Society for
American Baseball Research and sent WHO NAMED THE NEW YORK YANKEES? to them
cold.  (I did this many years ago with "the Big Apple" and got no response.)
They have accepted ADS members in the past (Mencken, Read on "O. K.," for
example) and I can't think of stories more relevant to New Yorkers.  And if I
solve "New Yorker"--
        The PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE is on CD-ROM from 1728-1783; the newspaper
has been described as "THE NEW YORK TIMES" of early America.  I decided to
give it a go with "New Yorker."
        There were two early hits from the 1750s.

June 20, 1755--"The Yorker had taken 50 hogsheads of melasses on board..."

July 1, 1756--"New York, June 28...A letter from a New Yorker in the West
Indies, dated May 29, 1756..."

        If you ever see anyone from THE NEW YORKER, tell him or her that the
guy who solved New Yorker, Big Apple, Great White Way, New York's Finest, New
York Yankees, Bronx Bombers, Miss Manhattan, and...hel-LO!, would really,
really enjoy the pleasure of rejection slip!

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 07:50:16 -0400
From:    Robert Ness  ness[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DICKINSON.EDU 
Subject:  No subject given 

I know there was a discussion quite recently about grammar books. A
colleague proposes to teach a one semester college level course on
descriptive English grammar and is looking for a text. I suggested the new
book by Anita Barry, English Grammar:Language as Human Behavior, but the
cost is $50+. Any other suggestions, maybe in paperback?

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 10:04:45 -0400
From:    "William A. Kretzschmar"  billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ATLAS.UGA.EDU 
Subject: NWAV(E) 27 Call for Papers

I thought the following might be of interest to many on the list.

Regards, Bill
************************************************************************
Bill Kretzschmar                Phone:    706-542-5099
Director, Linguistics Program   FAX:      706-542-2897
317 Park Hall                   Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
University of Georgia           Atlas Phone: 706-542-2246
Athens, GA  30602-6205          Atlas Web Page: http://hyde.park.uga.edu


Initial Call for Papers
NWAV(E) 27    New Ways of Analyzing Variation (in English and other languages)

NWAV(E) 27 will be held Oct. 1-4, 1998, in Athens, GA, at the Georgia
Center for Continuing Education of the University of Georgia. Plenary
speakers will include William Labov and Salikoko Mufwene, and the program
will include both workshops and separate papers according to standard
practice for the meeting. There will also be a poster session.

In the two days preceding NWAV(E) 27, September 29 and 30, there will be a
state-of-the-art conference on African American Vernacular English, hosted
by Professor Sonja Lanehart, called "Sociocultural and Historical Contexts
of African American Vernacular English".  This meeting will feature
invited presentations by 14 leading scholars in the field.

Abstracts

Abstracts are invited in all areas of language variation studies, both
synchronic and diachronic, for both 20-minute presentations and for
posters. Abstracts will be refereed anonymously. The abstract deadline is
June 15, 1998; notification is expected by August 1. International
participants who require certification of participation at an earlier
date, to apply for travel funding, should contact the organizers as soon
as possible.

Abstracts should be submitted in two parts. The first part should include
the full title and the abstract text of no more than 500 words including
bibliography (i.e. to fit on a single page in appropriate format). The
author's name(s) should not appear in the text of the abstract or title.
The second part should give the full title of the submission and the
author's name(s), with address, e-mail, fax, and phone numbers. Please
indicate whether you wish your abstract to be considered for presentation,
for a poster, or for either.

Abstracts may be submitted by e-mail (preferred) as an ASCII message
containing both parts of the abstract (no attachments, please).
Alternatively, authors may send a fully formatted hard copy of the
abstract (six copies of the abstract, and one copy of the separate
identification page), plus a diskette containing the text file, to the
organizers via regular mail.

Send e-mail abstracts to:  nwave27[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]linguistics.uga.edu.
Send regular mail abstracts to: Bill Kretzschmar, NWAV(E) 27, Linguistics
Program, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-6205. If your mail
service requires a building name or street name, add "Park Hall, Baldwin
Street" to the address.

A Web site for NWAV(E) 27 has been established at
http://www.linguistics.uga.edu/nwave27.  Additional information will
posted there as it becomes available.

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 11:17:46 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: paralegal

Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU  writes
    
On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Bapopik wrote:

  WEEK.  "Paralegal" appears to have been coined by an Philadelphia lawyer
 named
  Shapiro, in 1970.  (All true American lawyers are named Shapiro.)

Actually, the word is a little older than that:

1969 _Denver Law Journal_ 46: 392  The thesis of this article is that the legal
 profession can best respond to the
increasing demand for legal services by providing some legal services through
 "paralegal" or
"sublegal" personnel.

_Id._ 393  The "paralegal" is one who is not a lawyer, not under direct
 supervision of a lawyer, but who needs some
legal training to do his job well.  Examples of paralegals are welfare workers,
 insurance adjusters, and probation
officers.

     (end Fred Shapiro quote)

But this is clearly a different sense from the modern one, which is pretty well
 defined in Barry's citation (BUSINESS
WEEK, 26 December 1970, pg. 62):
  ===
 Three young Philadelphia lawyers have taken a page from the medical
 profession's book in an effort to help attorneys
swamped with paperwork and clamoring clients.  Richard J. Braemer, Daniel
 Promisio, and Paul E. Shapiro
(shown in photo--ed.), all former members of Philadelphia law firms, have set up
 the Institute of Paralegal Training to turn
college graduates into paraprofessionals.  The assistants will handle research
 and administrative chores so that lawyers
can spend more time practicing law.
  ===

Fred Shapiro's 1969 "'paralegal' or 'sublegal' personnel" are people not in the
 legal profession (e.g., "welfare workers,
insurance adjusters, and probation officers") whose work requires some knowledge
 of law, which (I infer) the article is
proposing that lawyers offer them. Furthermore, the scare quotes and alternative
 term "sublegal" show pretty clearly
that the words are not well established. They suggest that they are being
 tentatively proposed as names for these
members of tangential professions, with whom the article proposes the
 establishment of a formal relationship.

In contrast, Barry's (and Paul Shapiro et al.'s) 1970 graduates (certificatees
 [?!], finishers, products...) of the Institute of
Paralegal Training *are* what we currently call paralegals, handling research
 and administrative chores for lawyers and
under their direct supervision. The name is viewed as settled, at least by the
 founders of the institute, and is presumably
derived as a specialization of "paraprofessional".

I'd say that the 1969 cite is a stillbirth, a proposed neologism that didn't
 catch on, distinct in meaning from the 1970
homonym that did.

-- Mark

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 16:29:25 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: Hello! Hello!

The dramatised Alexander Grahame Bell, in a biographical TV film used
his preferred, but short-lived "Ahoy!" as an initial greeting on the
newly invented telephone.

I was dialogue editor (a technical function) on this 2 part series
coproduced by a Canadian and a New Zealand company. The American
director/writer lived in fear of the Smithsonian finding factual fault,
and asserted the authenticity of this attempted coining.

Kind regards - Ross Chambers.
--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 1 May 1998 14:43:56 -0400
From:    Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: paralegal

On Fri, 1 May 1998, Mark Mandel wrote:

  But this is clearly a different sense from the modern one, which is pretty
 well defined in Barry's citation (BUSINESS
  WEEK, 26 December 1970, pg. 62):
    ===
  Fred Shapiro's 1969 "'paralegal' or 'sublegal' personnel" are people not in
 the legal profession (e.g., "welfare workers,
  insurance adjusters, and probation officers") whose work requires some
 knowledge of law, which (I infer) the article is
  proposing that lawyers offer them. Furthermore, the scare quotes and
 alternative term "sublegal" show pretty clearly
  that the words are not well established. They suggest that they are being
 tentatively proposed as names for these
  members of tangential professions, with whom the article proposes the
 establishment of a formal relationship.
 
  In contrast, Barry's (and Paul Shapiro et al.'s) 1970 graduates (certificatees
 [?!], finishers, products...) of the Institute of
  Paralegal Training *are* what we currently call paralegals, handling research
 and administrative chores for lawyers and
  under their direct supervision. The name is viewed as settled, at least by the
 founders of the institute, and is presumably
  derived as a specialization of "paraprofessional".
 
  I'd say that the 1969 cite is a stillbirth, a proposed neologism that didn't
 catch on, distinct in meaning from the 1970
  homonym that did.

Your point is well-taken, in fact after I posted my message I was
wondering myself whether this was really the same sense of _paralegal_ as
the contemporary one.  Well, here is another 1969 cite that is much closer
to the contemporary meaning:

1969 _Journal of Urban Law_ 47: 137  While much of the work of the
non-professionals was supportive, there were times when the legal
assistants actually fulfilled the expectation that para-legal aides could
perform as independent advocates.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
 Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
 Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
 e-mail: fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 30 Apr 1998 to 1 May 1998
***********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (5/1/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 29 Apr 1998 to 30 Apr 1998             98-05-01 00:00:20
There are 10 messages totalling 456 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. table-bussing (4)
  2. Paralegal (Shapiro, 1970) (2)
  3. Business terms (from FORBES, 1925)
  4. Ellen Johnson's address
  5. Hello (1848!?)
  6. thole story, etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 15:03:11 GMT+1000
From:    David Blair  dblair[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PIP.ELM.MQ.EDU.AU 
Subject: table-bussing

Dining-room staff in such establishments as McDonalds, I'm assured,
do a lot of table-bussing.  That is, they clear and wipe clean the
tables.

I'm also assured that this is a recent import into Australian English
from American English.  I had imagined that it was a development of
buss = "kiss", until my colleague Bill Greaves (who's Canadian)
told me about bus-boys.  And the OED gives:

Bus-boy:  see Omnibus
4. A man or boy who assists a waiter at an hotel, restaurant, etc.

1888 Star 11 Aug. 4/5 To pay to what is known in a restaurant as an
`omnibus', i.e. a lad that clears the tables.
1897 Daily News 19 June 2/6 Omnibuses..apprentices- who wait on the
waiters.

Is anyone familiar with the use of "bus" as a simple verb or in such
compounds as "table-bussing"?  My inadequate selection of American
dictionaries has revealed nothing as yet.


David Blair
Head of School
English, Linguistics & Media
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY  NSW  2109  AUSTRALIA
Phone:  02 9850 8736    Fax:    02 9850 6900

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 15:33:05 +0900
From:    Andrew Moody  moody[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NUCBA.AC.JP 
Subject: Re: table-bussing

 
 Is anyone familiar with the use of "bus" as a simple verb or in such
 compounds as "table-bussing"?  My inadequate selection of American
 dictionaries has revealed nothing as yet.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dict., 10th Edition (1993) lists the following
definitions for "bus" vb.

--intransitive
1) to travel by bus
2) to work as a busboy

--transitive
1) transport by bus
2) a) CLEAR 4D (citation is "to remove from an area or place (clear dishes
from the table ")  bus dishes 
   b) to remove dirty dishes from  bus tables 

At the moment, I can't remember hearing the term in any context other than
restaurants.

I've also always been under the impression that "bussing" could also
include preparing the table for the next customer, but I don't know that
this is included in the standard use of the term.

Also, there may be words for busboy ("bus-people"???) paraphernalia,
especially the carts used to bus the dishes away from the table. Could this
be the origin of the term?


Andrew Moody
Nagoya University of
Commerce and Business Administration
Nagoya, Japan

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 07:42:40 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Paralegal (Shapiro, 1970)

        "Paralegal" sounds like its been around since the Greeks, but it's not
so.  The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is an ad from August
22, 1972 in the NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL.
        I'm researching business and legal terms, and I found this in BUSINESS
WEEK.  "Paralegal" appears to have been coined by an Philadelphia lawyer named
Shapiro, in 1970.  (All true American lawyers are named Shapiro.)
        This is from BUSINESS WEEK, 26 December 1970, pg. 62:

MANAGEMENT
_Legal aides_
_for busy lawyers_

Three young Philadelphia lawyers have taken a page from the medical
profession's book in an effort to help attorneys swamped with paperwork and
clamoring clients.  Richard J. Braemer, Daniel Promisio, and Paul E. Shapiro
(shown in photo--ed.), all former members of Philadelphia law firms, have set
up the Institute of Paralegal Training to turn college graduates into
paraprofessionals.  The assistants will handle research and administrative
chores so that lawyers can spend more time practicing law.
     While the concept is relatively new in the U. S. legal profession, it is
well-established in British law firms.  There, some 30,000 legal assistants
take care of a full range of routine, mostly administrative legal functions.
Their output ir reviewed and approved by solicitors, and they cannot give
legal counsel to a client.
     But in the U. S., says Mitch Miller, a Philadelphia lawyer who is active
in the legal assistant movement, "You might say lawyers have a problem in
delegating work.  Doctors are smarter.  They wised up a long time ago."
(...)
     Braemer, Promisio, and Shapiro charge $500 for their three-month course.
They have already put in almost six months training their first two classes of
assistants--mostly women--in the basics of corporate law.  They lecture on
such topics as employment and merger and acquisition agreements, stock
options, regulation of public sales of securities, and the Securities Exchange
Act of 1934.

     This is from BUSINESS WEEK, 29 June 1974, pg. 86:

LEGAL AFFAIRS
_The hot job market for paralegal aides_
(...)
_A new phenomenon._  Many law firms have long employed non-lawyer clerks, but
the specially trained paralegal is a phenomenon of the 1970s.
     The grandfather of the paralegal schools is Philadelphia's private
Institute for Paralegal Training, now only four years old (and in April 1973,
bought by Bell & Howell Co.).  Since 1970 it has graduated 1,200 students of
whom about 1,000 are employed in banks, law firms, and corporations in 45
cities, according to Paul C. Shapiro, a founder and co-director of the
institute.  About 5% have gone on to law school.
     From its original offering of one three-month corporate law course, the
institute's program had broadened to embrace six courses: estates and trusts,
real estate litigation, employee benefit plans, general practice (a four-month
course), and criminal law (to be offered for the first time in the fall).
(...)
     There are now more than 50 training programs in the U. S., most of them
unlike Person's or the Philadelphia Institute--nonprofit affiliates of
colleges and universities.  According to Mrs. Lilly Cohen, administrator of
the one-year-old paralegal program at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.
Y., paralegal courses are given at two-year and four-year colleges, in
secreatarial schools, and even at the master's degree level.  But the largest
number of such courses are in the junior colleges, says Mrs. Cohen.

FUN PERSONAL FACT:  I have never--as a lawyer in New York City--been paid as
much as New York City paralegals.  When I graduated, passed the bar exam, and
couldn't find a job, one firm told me, "we can't send a lawyer as a
paralegal."  Oh....When I got my first job (not THAT long ago), I watched a
cable show called "Law Line" that was about paralegal employment.  "Paralegals
start at $25,000," the guest said.  My salary was $19,100.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 08:39:07 -0400
From:    David Bergdahl  bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: Re: table-bussing

Both "bus-boy" and "bussing the table" are commonplace in America.  The
Bavarian Buss = Ger Kuess is unrelated.

 _____________________________________________________________________
bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ohiou.edu                      Ohio University / Athens
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl         Ellis Hall 114c
tel: (740) 593-2783                     Office hours:
fax: (740) 593-2818                         MTThF 10:10-11 a.m.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:05:54 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Business terms (from FORBES, 1925)

     This is part of a continuing series of posting some of these things
before this apartment catches fire.

BLACK MONDAY--In Forbes, 15 Dec. 1925, pg. 29, col. 3.  It's usually Black
FRIDAY and BLUE Monday--not Black Monday nor Blue Friday.

FLAT TOP--Forbes, 15 October 1925, pg. 70, cols. 2-3, has "Market Is Again
Making 'Flat Top.'"  A modern medical term might be "flatliners."  "'Flat top'
simply expresses the failure of the general averages to make a sustained
movement in either direction..."

DIRECT-BY-MAIL ADVERTISING--An ad in Forbes, 1 October 1925, pg. 956, col. 3,
is for "DIRECT-BY-MAIL ADVERTISING."  The OED has "direct mail advertising"
from 1930.

SUPERIORITY COMPLEX--Forbes, 1 October 1925, pg. 894, col. 1, has an article
about the young technical graduate called "That 'Superiority Complex.'"  OED
has this from 1929.

BUGS (small cars)--We discussed the return of VW Beetle "bugs."  Forbes, 15
September 1925, col. 2, has "Very small cars, patterned after the English
Austin 'bugs' but equipped with special Continental motors giving fifty to
sixty miles to the gallon, will be offered the American public next year, a
trade rumor has it."

CREEPING BULL MARKET--Forbes, 1 August 1925, pg. 631, col. 1:  "A PHRASE of
ancient vintage in the financial district best describes the stock market of
recent weeks.  In the old days Wall Street used to call such an affair a
'creeping bull market.'  Having crept along cautiously..."

FIVE MINUTES--"Five minutes" often means "just a second"--it's never five
minutes nor just a second.  It's in Forbes, 1 September 1925, pg. 756, col. 3.

PICTURE/LOOK IS WORTH 1,000/10,000 WORDS--OED has "a look is worth 1,000
words" from 1921 and "a picture is worth 10,000 words" from 1927.  Forbes, 1
July 1925, pg. 444, col. 2, has "A Demonstration Is Worth 10,000 Words."
David Shulman told me he recently found "a look is worth a thousand words"
from an 1840s Elton's comic book of popular sayings.

RICH MEN'S BULL MARKET--Forbes articles in the 1920s scare me--you could
reprint them today!  Like the article by B. C. Forbes, 15 November 1925, "The
Wall Street Boom--How Long Will It Last?"  (No more than five years, buddy.)
An article on booms of other years, 15 November 1925, pg. 60, col. 3, has:
     The same conditions had become evident in 1904, before the so-called
"rich men's bull market" was swept into sudden and violent liquidation by
Thomas W. Lawson's publication (he also wrote the 1888 pamphlet on baseball
slang called THE KRANK--ed.), in December, of his full-page advertisement
advising sale of the over-bought Amalgamated Copper shares in particular and
of all other stocks in general.  Wall Street long ascribed the complete
collapse of the excited "Brooklyn Rapid Transit boom" of 1899, in which all
speculative shares had participated, to the sudden death on May 11 of Governor
Flower, the avowed promoter of the rise; but 16 per cent. call money had
shaken the Stock Exchange long before that date.  The "rich men's panic" and
prolonged reaction of 1903 has been very commonly attributed to Mr. J. P.
Morgan's "undigested-securities" interview at the end of March...
     ("Brooklyn Rapid Transit boom" and "rich men's panic" and "undigested
securities" are usually not recorded...my sister works for J. P. Morgan--ed.)

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:10:55 -0400
From:    Mary Brown Zeigler  engmez[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PANTHER.GSU.EDU 
Subject: Ellen Johnson's address

Can anyone tell me Ellen Johnson's address?
Ellen, do you have your ears on (eyes on)?  Give me a yell, soon.
mary

Mary B. Zeigler
Georgia State University
Department of English
Atlanta, GA 30303
mzeigler[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gsu.edu
Voice (404) 651-2900
Fax (404) 651-1710

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 13:31:24 -0400
From:    Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: Hello (1848!?)

Here are some more early citations for _hello_.  The first of these
supports Barry Popik's linking of the word with Bowery slang.


1849 George G. Foster _New York in Slices ... being the original slices
published in the N.Y. Tribune_ 120  THE BOWERY. ... "Hello, Bill Swipes!
You up in the second tier!

1852 _Southern Quarterly Review_ V. 332  Miss Caroline or Martha, being
indisputably ... corporeally weaker than Sambo, would be thrust into the
mud.  "Hello da!  Miss Caroline git two teet knock out, and Miss Marta hab
a black eye and bloody nose!"

1853 _Southern Literary Messenger_ XIX. 218  Hello, Dick, ain't they
nearly all opened?


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
 Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
 Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
 e-mail: fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 15:59:36 -0400
From:    Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: Paralegal (Shapiro, 1970)

On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Bapopik wrote:

  WEEK.  "Paralegal" appears to have been coined by an Philadelphia lawyer
 named
  Shapiro, in 1970.  (All true American lawyers are named Shapiro.)

Actually, the word is a little older than that:

1969 _Denver Law Journal_ 46: 392  The thesis of this article is that the
legal profession can best respond to the increasing demand for legal
services by providing some legal services through "paralegal" or
"sublegal" personnel.

_Id._ 393  The "paralegal" is one who is not a lawyer, not under direct
supervision of a lawyer, but who needs some legal training to do his job
well.  Examples of paralegals are welfare workers, insurance adjusters,
and probation officers.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
 Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
 Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
 e-mail: fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 16:17:33 -0500
From:    Shannon Detchemendy  detch[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UMR.EDU 
Subject: Re: table-bussing

Being a former waitress, I have heard the term "bus" a lot.  There is also
the term "pre-bus" used to describe when a waitress comes to your table
before you are ready to leave and takes your dirty plates etc...  I do not
know the origins of either of these uses.  I do know that both are still
frequently used in restaurant jargon.

Shannon Detchemendy

At 03:03 PM 4/30/98 GMT+1000, you wrote:
 Dining-room staff in such establishments as McDonalds, I'm assured,
 do a lot of table-bussing.  That is, they clear and wipe clean the
 tables.
 
 I'm also assured that this is a recent import into Australian English
 from American English.  I had imagined that it was a development of
 buss = "kiss", until my colleague Bill Greaves (who's Canadian)
 told me about bus-boys.  And the OED gives:
 
 Bus-boy:  see Omnibus
 4. A man or boy who assists a waiter at an hotel, restaurant, etc.
 
 1888 Star 11 Aug. 4/5 To pay to what is known in a restaurant as an
 `omnibus', i.e. a lad that clears the tables.
 1897 Daily News 19 June 2/6 Omnibuses..apprentices- who wait on the
 waiters.
 
 Is anyone familiar with the use of "bus" as a simple verb or in such
 compounds as "table-bussing"?  My inadequate selection of American
 dictionaries has revealed nothing as yet.
 
 
 David Blair
 Head of School
 English, Linguistics & Media
 MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY  NSW  2109  AUSTRALIA
 Phone:  02 9850 8736    Fax:    02 9850 6900
 
 

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 30 Apr 1998 17:10:58 -0400
From:    "Beverly Flanigan (by way of Beverly Flanigan
          flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]oak.cats.ohiou.edu )"  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: thole story, etc.

This is an edited copy of a message I sent to David Sutcliffe, partly to
give him my first name and partly to add a bit more to the 'thole story'
and related matters.  (And it didn't apparently reach him anyway.)


 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 12:26:09 -0400
 To: david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES
 From: Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]oak.cats.ohiou.edu 
 Subject: Re: St Louis Blues etc.
 
 David,
 Just a return comment on this note and your summary of the "thole"
responses.  I guess my first name didn't show up on my 'tole   tow'
comment, and I didn't think of the fact that since you're not in the
"American circle" of ADS you wouldn't know me from Adam (or Eve)!  I've
been working on Midland/South Midland dialect for a long time and have
become familiar with the "grandmawl" phenomenon from my southern Ohio
students.  In that word there is also a more British-like low back vowel
than the rest of the country has: it's not the low central /a/ of most
AmEng but the low back V of your 'pot', midway between /a/ and open O
(backward C).  McDavid was aware of it, but more recent dialectologists
know it less well.  I've done ADS conference papers on this and will try to
publish a couple of articles on SE Ohio soon--when time permits!
 
 On the bolt/boat issue, I agree with you that 'boat' is more plausible in
your context.  However, IF the word were 'bolt,' it might well be
pronounced with vocalized /l/: 'bo't'.  Jesse Jackson spoke here last
night, and his 'help   he'p' pronunciation was very salient.  (He speaks
Standard So/SoMid   Upland South Carolina, not Black English, except in
obvious switches.)
 
 On Labov's division: Yes, the Midland is alive and well in the U.S.!
Again, this is a major point I (and others) are trying to establish, contra
Carver, Houck, et al.  It may be that the old North Midland is melding in
with Northern, and the South Midland is becoming simply Midland--but it is
clearly distinctive from North and South.  Cincinnati, St. Louis (where I
lived for ten years), Atlanta, etc. are indeed islands in this area, mainly
because of their rapidly changing demographics.
                                                              Beverly Olson
Flanigan
                                                              Ohio
University, Athens
                                                              (out of
Minnesota--very Northern)
 
 At 03:12 PM 4/25/98 +0200, you wrote:
   On 25/4/98 Allan Metcalf wrote:
   
    Thinking of Walt Wolfram giving the Tamony lecture in Columbia,
    Missouri, today; and feeling sorry that I couldn't make it to that
  annual celebration of
  American English, got me thinking about Missouri and its language.
  St Louis has the peculiarity of being a Northern speech island in a
  sea of Midland. But has this always been so? Was it the case when Lewis
  and Clark set off on their expedition? Has anybody studied St Louis
  speech of the 19th century?
   
  Allan Metcalf 
  
  This reminded me of the research William Labov, Sherry Ash & associates
  are doing on vowel shift chains. They are convinced that a great
  Northern vowel shift is under way in the northern cities of Chicago,
  Detroit, etc. and are also convinced there's a great Southern vowel
  vowel shift in progress throughout the South. This leaves the cities in
  the middle, Cincinatti and westwards, and here they find that each major
  city is going its own sweet way (Labov, pers. communication 1995). I'm
  not sure what they say about St Louis, but it would be enlightening to
  talk to them about this. At all events the situation they describe seems
  to bear out the three-way division: Northern, Midland, Southern, which
  was recently questioned.
  
  David Sutcliffe
  
   

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 29 Apr 1998 to 30 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/30/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 28 Apr 1998 to 29 Apr 1998             98-04-30 00:00:28
This message contains more text than QuickMail can display. The entire message
 has been enclosed as a file.

There are 10 messages totalling 678 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. St Louis Blues
  2. Hello (1848!?) (2)
  3. UNSUBSCRIBE
  4. Hello
  5. More thole
  6. Reply-to issue, tech notes
  7. arizona english only struck down (again?)
  8. excerpts from az court decision
  9. RP

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 01:28:06 -0500
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: Re: St Louis Blues

 Thinking of Walt Wolfram giving the Tamony lecture in Columbia, Missouri,
 today; and feeling sorry that I couldn't make it to that annual celebration of
 American English, got me thinking about Missouri and its language.
 
 St Louis has the peculiarity of being a Northern speech island in a sea of
 Midland. But has this always been so? Was it the case when Lewis and Clark set
 off on their expedition? Has anybody studied St Louis speech of the 19th
 century?
 
 Don Lance, do you know?
 
 - Allan Metcalf

                         

I didn't respond to AAllan's query immediately because I wanted to do a
little research.  Upon consulting a history of Missouri, I find these facts
reported:

In 1800, St. Louis was "still a French village of about 1000 inhabitants
and 180 houses."
In 1799 there were only 300 residents in the St. Charles district
surrounding St. Louis.
In 1795, the officials in St. Louis suddenly changed earlier policy and
began permitting Americans to settle west of the Mississippi.  The
Louisiana Territory [Upper and Lower] belonged to Spain from 1862 until
1800, and Spain began to worry about the British encroaching on Upper
Louisiana.
Some American had come into the Territory between 1862 and 1895 but had to
be Catholic to do so.
Where would these settlers have come from?  By the year 1795 "at least
50,000 pioneers had crossed the mountains to claim land in Ohio, Kentucky,
and Tennessee along the Ohio River and its tributaries."
In 1802, "approximately 550 river craft carried goods from the American
West down to New Orleans," where it could be sent on cargo ships to
Atlantic seaports.  In 1795, Spain had to lift its embargo against American
navigation on the Mississippi.
Estimates of population in the Missouri Territory:
1800        7,000
1804       10,000 (equally divided between French and Americans)
1810       20,000
1820       67,000
1830      140,455
1840      383,702
1850      682,044
1860    1,182,012

The early settlers were mostly farmers and other pioneer sorts who had
migrated southwestward from Pennsylvania into Virginia and North Carolina
and then westward into Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley.  So, the
answer to Allan's first question is that St Louis would have been a
proto-South-Midland speech island at the time of the Lewis & Clark
Expedition.

As soon as St. Louis had developed enough shipping business to make it
worthwhile, industrialists from the East (Chicago was still developing) set
up operations there, and after railroads were build factories became viable
business opportunities for those who had the capital to start them.

I don't know whether anyone has studied 19th-century St. Louis speech, but
the most most complete study of Missouri as a whole is the article by Lance
& Faries in the LAVIS II volume.

DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 02:34:54 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Hello (1848!?)

      The citations for "hello" in 1852 (by a fireman) and in 1853 (by Mose,
fireman of the Bowery) led me to believe that the first "hello" would be from
Bowery slang, in the 1848 play by Benjamin A. Baker, A GLANCE AT NEW YORK.
Mose the fireman was the play's main character.
      I read the play today.  Was "hello" in this 1848 play?
      Twice.

Pg. 21 LIZE:  Hello!  Mose, what's the matter?
Pg. 22 MIKE:  Hallo! Major; where have you been?
Pg. 25 HARRY:  Hello! Mose.  Where are you going?

      The only caveat I have is that I did NOT read the 1848 play.  I read
Samuel French's Standard Drama, The Acting Edition, No. CCXVI, published about
1890.  The original 1848 play was also published by French.  There is no
reason to suppose that the two editions would be different, but you never
know.  Neither the NYPL nor the Library of Congress have the original; copies
are at Brown and Yale Universities, however.
      The RHHDAS quotes this play for "foo foo" (as does the DA) and "knock
down drag out."  Page 21 has "there's goin' to be a first-rate shindig."  I
don't know how you can find some items and not find others.  The play's only
about 30 pages long!  "Hello" is so common, however, that you forget to look
for it!   Again, the 1848 original may be different, but I don't think so.
      "Hello" is probably an Americanism in its 150th year!

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:56:41 +0400
From:    derya karapinar  e101149[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ORCA.CC.METU.EDU.TR 
Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE

    UNSUBSCRIBE/AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY/DERYA KARAPINAR

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:30:49 +0200
From:    David Sutcliffe  david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES 
Subject: Re: Hello

My caveat would be that you may need to look beyond the Bowery for the
origins of hello. I haven't got time to check this at the moment (plane
to catch) but my impression is that hello/hallo/ halloa was in use in
England around mid-19th century, possibly earlier. Also when I was
looking at Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, I found Harris
putting a "dialectal" form of hello in the mouth of the old African
American story teller who was meant to have been born around 1800.

Besides that caveat, I was wondering what the informal greetings were
that immediately predated hello - hail, well met? Howdy? or were English
speakers limited to good morning/afternoon/evening?

David Sutcliffe

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:36:55 +0100
From:    Aaron Drews  aaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LING.ED.AC.UK 
Subject: More thole

        With all of this talk about "tole" and "thole", I was wondering of
anyone ever heard of "thole" meaning "to put up with", as in "I thole the
construction just outside my flat".  I know it's a Scots word, but I was
just curious to see if it remained in southern and/or midland anywhere.
        --Aaron

========================================================================
Aaron E. Drews                           http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron
Departments of English Language                      +44 (0)131 650-3485
and Linguistics

"MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
        --Death

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 09:27:00 +0000
From:    Victoria Neufeldt  vneufeldt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM 
Subject: Re: Reply-to issue, tech notes

This "reply to" issue seems to be getting more confusing all the
time.  I confess that I don't yet understand a whole lot of the technical
explanation in Andrea Vine's message.  But I seem to have solved the
problem for myself, at least: I discovered (accidentally, like most
of what I've learned about computers, I think!) that the "Special"
button to the left of the Reply window allows me to specify an
address other than my own for replies to a message I send.  Clicking
on this button brings up "Advanced addressing and formatting" and I
can enter the ADS-L address in the "Send replies to" field.

So, for the message I'm writing right now, I first changed Andrea Vine's
address, which originally appeared in the "To" field of the "Reply"
window, to the ADS-L address.  Then when I've completed my message, I
will click on the "Special" button and put the ADS-L address in the
"Send replies to" field I find there, so that when my message appears in the
mailboxes of List subscribers, you will all see "Reply to ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] . ."
instead of "Reply to vneufeldt . . ."  -- I sincerely hope.  Without
that "Special" change, my own e-mail address seems to be
automatically placed in that field.  Incidentally, I also discovered
that clicking on the "Editor" button at the top to the left of the
window brings me back to the "Reply" window.  NONE of these button
labels, by the way, strike me as being at all obvious for the new
user (except for "Send" and "Cancel"!).

We have Pegasus Mail here at Merriam-Webster.  Other systems may be
different.  But I hope the above helps.

Victoria Neufeldt


  Date:          Tue, 28 Apr 1998 11:01:42 -0700
  Reply-to:      Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]Eng.Sun.COM 
  From:          Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
  Subject:       Reply-to issue, tech notes
  To:            ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU

  Ross et al,  -- who is this "Al", anyway?
 
  I don't think there is much that can be done about which address gets
  automatically put into the "To" field when you choose "Reply"  (or a similar
  command) in your email software.
 
  Email client software, which is the software you use to retrieve, manage, and
  compose your email, varies quite a bit.  There are several variations which
  could be involved in the "Reply-to" inconsistency.  It is connected to the
 fact
  that there are several headers relating to the originating address which
 might
  be attached to a message.  The 3 most likely are "From", "Sender", and
  "Reply-To".  The standard allows for all 3 to be used, though it isn't the
  preferred configuration.
 
  When the list repackages and forwards submitted messages, it probably is
  including the full complement of generated headers, perhaps slightly altered
 by
  adding the word "Resent-" at the beginning of the header name.  The person
 who
  receives the repackaged message may then want to reply.  Upon clicking the
  "Reply" button, the email client now has several addresses to choose from.
  Since it is never certain which headers will come with a message, the client
  software will probably choose the address for the "To" field based on a
  hierarchy of headers.  Since the presence of these headers varies, sometimes
 it
  will choose the list and sometimes it will choose the individual who mailed
 to
  the list.
 
  All of this is mostly automated - user choice of headers is usually limited
 to
  "From", "Reply-To", "To", "Cc", "Bcc", and "Subject" (and very occasionally,
  "Sender").  Most folks don't even have a "Reply-To" header option; either
 their
  software generates the header or it doesn't.
 
  So the workaround is to use human eyes to check the "To" field and verify
 that
  this is indeed the intended recipient.  Or for some folks, "Reply to all" may
  add the list in with the individual address.
 
  Andrea Vine
  Sun Internet Mail Server i18n
  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]eng.sun.com
 
  }}Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:31:28 +1000
  }}From: Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au 
  }}Subject: Fwd Re A raft of... reply functions?
  }}To: ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU
  }}Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
 
  snip
 
  }}
  }}The above was probably meant for the list-at-large, and I forward it.
  }}
  }}This "reply to" option is surely a protocol set up by the list server--I
  }}really can't see what control I have over it. My inquiry to the (human)
  }}ADS list operator re my last little [=20] suffix on each line problem
  }}was ignored, perhaps someone with more patience than I would like to
  }}nail this one.
  }}
  }}Kind regards - Ross Chambers
  }}--
  }}
  }}xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  }}
  }}Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
  }}maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au
 

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 09:14:47 -0500
From:    Dennis Baron  debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU 
Subject: arizona english only struck down (again?)

here's the web site for the article--


http://www.azcentral.com:80/news/0428english.shtml


__________________________________


Arizona court strikes down

              English-only law


              State high court says law is unconstitutional


              By Paul Davenport

              The Associated Press

              April 28, 1998


              PHOENIX -- The Arizona

              Supreme Court on Tuesday

              struck down as unconstitutional a voter-approved law requiring
 that

              official state and local business be conducted only in English.


              Several court challenges left the measure in legal limbo since
 voters

              approved it in 1988 as an amendment to the Arizona Constitution.

              A different challenge than the one decided Tuesday was left

              unresolved last year when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule

              on it.


              The state Supreme Court ruled the law violates free-speech rights

              under the U.S. Constitution of the public, public employees and

              elected officials.


              "The amendment adversely affects non-English-speaking persons

              and impinges on their ability to seek and obtain information and

              services from government," the opinion said.


              Also, because the measure "chills First Amendment rights that

              government is not otherwise entitled to proscribe," it also
 violates

              the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause,

              the opinion added.


              Opponents of the measure branded it as racist, while supporters

              called it common sense and promised to appeal to the U.S.

              Supreme Court.


              State Sen. Pete Rios, a Hayden Democrat who was among the

              plaintiffs in the case decided Tuesday, said the measure's

              supporters played on unjustified fears of those who cannot speak

              other languages.


              "There is no movement in the state of Arizona to replace English
 as

              the official language of this state," Rios said. "People accept
 that

              English is the official language of this state."


              Robert D. Park, a Prescott activist who campaigned for the law's

              passage and intervened in the court cases to defend it, said he

              would appeal in federal court, hopefully directly to the Supreme

              Court.


              "The First Amendment applies to private speech, not government

              speech. What they're saying here now is that ... a government

              employee has a right to choose what language to do business in,"

              Park said. "That is totally unacceptable."


              The state high court said it was expressing no opinion on the

              constitutionality of less restrictive English-only provisions nor

              discussing the legality of efforts that are limited to promoting

              English.


              "We also emphasize that nothing in this opinion compels any

              Arizona governmental entity to provide any service in a language

              other than English," the opinion said.


              Arizona is among at least 21 states that have enacted official
 English

              laws, though the Arizona version is more restrictive than most.
 Most

              of the others are largely symbolic, with several merely stating
 that

              English is the state's official language.


              The Arizona measure required the state and its political
 subdivisions

              to "act in English and no other language" and prohibited them
 from

              making laws or policies that required the use of a language other

              than English. Also, no government document "shall be valid,

              effective or enforceable unless it is in the English language."


              It allowed exceptions to comply with federal law, to protect the

              rights of crime victims and defendants, to protect public health
 and

              safety and to teach students in bilingual education.


              The court rejected arguments by defenders of the law that it
 related

              only to official acts of government and would not apply to such

              things as conversations between legislators and constituents.


              The opinion was written by retired Justice James Moeller and

              joined by Justices Thomas A. Zlaket, Charles E. Jones and Stanley

              G. Feldman.


              Justice Frederick J. Martone wrote a separate opinion in which he

              agreed with the results but expressed reservations about
 unresolved

              legal issues in the case.


              A U.S. District Court tossed the law out as unconstitutional, and
 the

              ruling was upheld by the federal Court of Appeals. But the U.S.

              Supreme Court sent the issue back to state courts on a
 technicality:

              the state employee who had filed that suit later left her
 government

              job.


              Attorney General Grant Woods' office had defended the law as

              constitutional because it was limited in scope, but an aide said

              Woods welcomed the latest ruling.


              "It's probably a good thing because we didn't need English only

              anyway," Woods spokeswoman Karie Dozer said.


              Stephen Montoya, the lawyer who challenged the law, did not

              immediately return a call Tuesday. He argued in November in court

              that the measure was "profoundly racist" and unconstitutional.


              "It is something that exclusively falls upon the Native Americans
 and

              the Asian-Americans and the Hispanic-Americans and does not fall

              upon the majority of people," Montoya said then.


________________________________________

Dennis Baron, Head               italic phone:  /italic 217-333-2390

Department of English            italic fax:  /italic 217-333-4321

University of Illinois           italic email:  /italic debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu

608 S. Wright Street            http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baron

Urbana, IL 61801

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 29 Apr 1998 09:16:48 -0500
From:    Dennis Baron  debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UIUC.EDU 
Subject: excerpts from az court decision

Excerpts of Court's opinion


              The Associated Press

              April 28, 1998


              PHOENIX -- Excerpts from Tuesday's Arizona Supreme Court

              opinion written by Justice James Moeller ruling that the state's

              official English law is unconstitutional.


              "We hold that the amendment violates the First Amendment to the

              United States Constitution because it adversely impacts the

              constitutional rights of non-English-speaking persons with regard
 to

              their obtaining access to their government and limits the
 political

              speech of elected officials and public employees. We also hold
 that

              the amendment violates the equal protection clause of the 14th

              Amendment to the United States Constitution because it unduly

              burdens core First Amendment rights of a specific class without

              materially advancing a legitimate state interest.


                                      ***


              "In making these rulings, we express no opinion concerning the

              constitutional validity of less restrictive English-only
 provisions

              discussed in this opinion. We also emphasize that nothing in this

              opinion compels any Arizona governmental entity to provide any

              service in a language other than English."


                                      ***


              "We agree with the Ninth Circuit's statement that Arizona's

              rejection of that tradition (of tolerance) by enacting the
 amendment

              has severe consequences not only for Arizona's public officia
======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/29/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 27 Apr 1998 to 28 Apr 1998             98-04-29 00:00:38
This message contains more text than QuickMail can display. The entire message
 has been enclosed as a file.

There are 10 messages totalling 648 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Hello; ho! boy; cover jinx
  2. United Nations (an Americanism!) (3)
  3. Thole story
  4. Fwd Re A raft of... reply functions?
  5. thole story, etc.
  6. Reply Functions
  7. Reply-to issue, tech notes (2)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 05:53:38 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Hello; ho! boy; cover jinx

HELLO

      I had previously discovered "hello" in the first issue of the theatrical
weekly NEW YORK CLIPPER (1853), used by that famous Bowery fireman of the
stage, Mose.  This predated the telephone "hellos" of the 1880s.
      I checked the comic magazine THE LANTERN (NY) January-June 1852, and our
first "hello" is now on page 200, col. 1:

      _Armed Intervention._
"Hello, fels!  Where's de muss, say?"

      Interestingly, it is also spoken by a fireman.  I haven't yet checked
the 1840s Mose cites at the public library's Lincoln Center branch for the
performing arts.
      Previously, on page 31 of THE LANTERN, under "New Works in Progress,"
there was "_Hallo There!_--By the author of Eo-then."  Pg. 4, col. 2 of the
first issue had "Hallo, Bill!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
HO! BOY

      This is from THE LANTERN (Jan.-June 1852), pg. 116, col. 2:

      If an individual were to ejaculate a vociferous summons to one of the
masculine gender not yet arrived at the age of maturity, what musical
instrument of celebrity would he be induced to denominate?
      Ho! boy.  (Haut-boy.)

      The RHHDAS's earliest citation is Bartlett's in 1857.  I had found the
"ho-boying" in the RHHDAS.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
COVER JINX

      I'm doing a study of the word "jinx."  I recently came across "cover
jinx" by accident.
      I was always familiar with the Sports Illustrated "cover jinx."
Supposedly, whoever was on the SI cover would then start to lose.  However, I
always felt that it was the nature of sports--you made the cover because you
won a championship of some sort, and you had nowhere else to go but down.
Record losers never made the cover.  I thought the phrase came from the 1970s,
but I haven't seen it recorded.
      This is from TIME, 5 January 1942, pg. 3, col. 1:

_Cover Jinx_
Sirs:
   TIME cover jinx still seems to be working.  Latest casualties:  Hutband,
Kimmel, Ferlor (?-ed.) von Bock.
   J. F. R.
Washington, D. C.
--TIME's "cover jinx" has sometimes appeared to work on sports figures but not
on others.  Franklin Roosevelt, who has appeared on TIME's cover six times
(including this week) since 1923 has, apparently, never felt it.  No jinx
operated on Admiral Kimmel or General von Bock; the Admiral was placed on the
cover after the news of Pearl Harbor arrived; of the General TIME said in its
cover story, "When a list is made of the generals who have done most to
whittle down Germany's chances of victory the name of Bock may lead all the
rest."  TIME hopes Admiral Yamamoto may rank as a sports figure.--ED.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 05:55:11 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: United Nations (an Americanism!)

      The "euro" people are taking great pains not to offend any European
country by using one language or symbol instead of another.
      The "United Nations" or "U. N.," however, is a different story.  It's an
Americanism!
       OED's entry is abysmal.  (I swear that I don't make these things up to
anger Fred Shapiro.)  The first citation is, of course, British:

1942 _Daily Tel._ 28 Jan. 3/3 But at any rate it will be long enough for Japan
to inflict...losses upon all of the United Nations who have...possession in
the Far East.

      The United Nations is defined "in the war of 1939-45, the Allied nations
who united against the Axis powers; hence, an international peace-seeking
organization of these and many other States, founded by charter in 1945 (in
full, _United Nations Organization_)."
      "United Nations" was indexed by both the 1942 Reader's Guide and the New
York Times Index.  This Associated Press story made at least a hundred
newspapers and is in the New York Times, 3 January 1942, pg. 4, col. 2:

_Term 'United Nations'_
      _Selected by Roosevelt_
  WASHINGTON, Jan. 2--The countries battling Axis powers were officially
designated today as the "united nations."
  They so described themselves in the pact in which they promised to make no
separate peace with their enemies.
  The designation, it was learned, was the result of long thought by President
Roosevelt.  He had been working night and day on the pact, and he pondered the
designation "united nations" until 2:30 Wednesday morning.
  He wanted an adequate description, it was understood, which would avoid
calling the signatories the "associated" or "allied" powers.
  During the last World War when these latter terms were used, it was
recalled, there was some opposition to alignment with any foreign powers.

      The "Declaration by United Nations" in "the struggle for victory over
Hitlerism.  Done at Washington, January First, 1942" made the front page of
just about every newspaper everywhere.  Newsweek of 12 January 1942 had on
pages 19- 21:  "United Nations Gear Strategy to Closing In on Axis Powers."
Time had a story on 19 January 1942, pages 13-14:

   FOREIGN RELATIONS
_The United Nations_
   A new phrase, the United Nations, slipped into the world's vocabulary.
Editorial writers and military commentators used it glibly.  And last week
they began to wonder what, exactly, it meant--that pact by which 26 nations
bound themselves fortnight ago not to make a separate peace with their Axis
enemies.

      The New York Times, 11 January 1942, Section IV, pg. 7, col. 7, had this
letter:

_EXPRESSION:  Use Approved_
   In his message to Congress the President used many times the term "United
Nations."  What a stirring expression!  Let's hope it will still be used after
the war is over and at the peace table.--
PHYLLIS KOEMA, Woodside, N. Y.

      This historical record of the origin of "United Nations"--an
Americanism--should be properly recorded.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 07:46:31 -0400
From:    Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: United Nations (an Americanism!)

Barry's slightly earlier citation for _United Nations_ is a very important
one.  It should be noted, however, that Raleigh C. Minor used the term
_United Nations_ to designate a proposed federal union of nations in his
book _A Republic of Nations_ (1918).


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
 Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
 Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
 e-mail: fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 15:01:47 +0200
From:    David Sutcliffe  david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES 
Subject: Re: Thole story

--openmail-part-0119f230-00000001
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 15:53:18 +0200
Content-Type: message/rfc822

Subject: Re: Thole story
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]trad.upf.es
TO: ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]listserv.uga.edu
Content-Type: multipart/Mixed; boundary="openmail-part-0119f230-00000002"


--openmail-part-0119f230-00000002
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; name="Texto"
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="Texto"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Thole story so far:  =20

(A lengthy story as set out here, but see far end of the message for
what seems to be the happy ending!)

 David Sutcliffe wrote:
    
     In the recording of an African American born circa 1855-1860, I
have the
     expression "one man a-riding tole mule" (tow mule?). I think he's
     actually saying t'ole mule. Can anyone confirm that "thole" (of a
horse
     or other draft animal) can mean "lead", "leading"?
  =20
  Mike Salovich responded:
  =20
   Have you considered that 'tole', or 't'ole' in your retranscription,
   could mean "the  old"?
  ...     ...
   ....  I've
   also heard "t'ole" in field recordings of southern folk music and
blues
   in contexts where substituting "the old" makes a perfectly reasonable=

   statement.


DMLance added:  =20
  I didn't respond earlier because I could only speculate.  What about a=

  contraction of "that ole" rather than "the ole"?  Would the person who=

said
  "tole mule" also have used the contraction "'tis"?  Wouldn't "the ole"=

be
  contracted as "dole" (but maybe spelled 'tole' so as not to confuse
the
  reader too much)?
  =20
  But, as far as I know (or don't know), 'tole' may have been a word
with a
  specific meaning in the past.
  =20
David Sutcliffe again:

Joan Hall, assistant editor of DARE, also contacted me directly to say
that there was indeed a specific word _tole_ (found in DARE, southern
states with the meaning "entice" or "enticement" (of an animal)
therefore in a sense "lead".

This point was also made, independently, by Bonnie Briggs, directly to
the List (pronunciation _thole_, in this case).

 =20
But going back to Mike Salovich's t'ole mule meaning "the old mule"
suggestion: good idea, but in the recording the /to:/ and /mju:/
take equal stress, which applied to Mike's reading would mean literally
the OLD mule, (not the young one) wouldn't it?

At all events DMLance queried, if _t'ole_ can mean _the old_, why can't
_tis_ mean "this". Well, there's an answer to that, or rather two
answers.

 One is that in Black English the syllable _duh_ frequently becomes
_tuh_ , and vice versa, hence _tuhrectly_ for "directly" and  _duh
morra_ for "tomorrow". The other, more British, explanation would be
that _t'other_ is common in many parts of the UK for "the other" where
the _t'_ is said to derive, as has been pointed out, from an earlier
form _that_ for the article.  =20


That was the story which I wrote up for the list yesterday. Signing off,=

I added:  I'm not sure where that leaves us, probably up the Brazos
without a paddle. =20

Then a fog seemed to clear. Thanks to Mr/Ms. Flanigan's suggestion
(sorry, don't have first name) about towing flat boats, it suddenly
struck me that the word pronounced /to:/ was in fact _tow_, and the
/bo:ts/ on the wagons were indeed _boats_. =20

The boats must have been transported over land on the wagons and then
used to tow the cannons across the rivers (bridges would have been
destroyed, or ferries owned by Confederates). Eureka! (I strongly
suspected that _bolts_ was wrong - I mean if you're going to talk about
events that happened 75 years earlier, you're likely to talk about
something more exciting than bolts). =20

So the unionist soldiers were riding the "tow" mule, not the "thole"
mule or the "tole" mule.

In fact, 2 sentences later the speaker says, by way of confirmation:
"All day long be crossin=B4".

Jasper TX, I found out from the atlas, isn't actually on a river, but
lies between the Neches and Sabine.

I'm really grateful to the above-mentioned contributors. Thanks to them
I think I/we have finally arrived at the solution. I'll check it out
with the historians, of course.


David Sutcliffe



Thanks for all the information and ideas.

--openmail-part-0119f230-00000002--

--openmail-part-0119f230-00000001--

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 12:25:49 -0400
From:    Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: United Nations (an Americanism!)

Here is a more precise citation for the use of _United Nations_ in a 1918
book.  Note also that the 1918 book even uses the abbreviation _U.N._!


United Nations (OED 1942)

1918 Raleigh C. Minor _A Republic of Natons_ 27  For the sake of
convenience of discussion, arbitrary terms have been used in designating
the union [a federal league of nations proposed by Minor], the compact,
and the officials supposed to act under it.  Thus the union is spoken of
as "The United Nations."


U.N. (OED 1946)

1918 Raleigh C. Minor _A Republic of Nations_ 257  U. N. Constitution.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
 Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
 Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
 e-mail: fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:31:28 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: Fwd Re A raft of... reply functions?

Subject: Re: A raft of...?
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 15:11:00 -0400
From: "Wendi Nichols"  wnichols[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]randomhouse.com 
To: maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

I wonder how long the expression has been in use in England?  It's used
quite often there, also in the contexts RC mentions (I just moved back
to
the US after years in London), and if it was in use during WWII, GIs
could
have picked up the expression there.
===========================================

The above was probably meant for the list-at-large, and I forward it.

This "reply to" option is surely a protocol set up by the list server--I
really can't see what control I have over it. My inquiry to the (human)
ADS list operator re my last little [=20] suffix on each line problem
was ignored, perhaps someone with more patience than I would like to
nail this one.

Kind regards - Ross Chambers
--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 12:39:42 -0400
From:    Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: thole story, etc.

This is an edited copy of a message I sent to David Sutcliffe, partly to
give him my first name and partly to add a bit more to the 'thole story'
and related matters.


 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 12:26:09 -0400
 To: david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES
 From: Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]oak.cats.ohiou.edu 
 Subject: Re: St Louis Blues etc.
 
 David,
 Just a return comment on this note and your summary of the "thole"
responses.  I guess my first name didn't show up on my 'tole   tow'
comment, and I didn't think of the fact that since you're not in the
"American circle" of ADS you wouldn't know me from Adam (or Eve)!  I've
been working on Midland/South Midland dialect for a long time and have
become familiar with the "grandmawl" phenomenon from my southern Ohio
students.  In that word there is also a more British-like low back vowel
than the rest of the country has: it's not the low central /a/ of most
AmEng but the low back V of your 'pot', midway between /a/ and open O
(backward C).  McDavid was aware of it, but more recent dialectologists
know it less well.  I've done ADS conference papers on this and will try to
publish a couple of articles on SE Ohio soon--when time permits!
 
 On the bolt/boat issue, I agree with you that 'boat' is more plausible in
your context.  However, IF the word were 'bolt,' it might well be
pronounced with vocalized /l/: 'bo't'.
 Jesse Jackson spoke here last night, and his 'help   he'p' pronunciation
was very salient.
 (He speaks Standard Southern, not Black English, except in obvious switches.)
 
 On Labov's division: Yes, the Midland is alive and well in the U.S.!
Again, this is a major point I (and others) are trying to establish, contra
Carver, Houck, et al.  It may be that the old North Midland is melding in
with Northern, and the South Midland is becoming simply Midland--but it is
clearly distinctive from North and South.  Cincinnati, St. Louis (where I
lived for ten years), Atlanta, etc. are indeed islands in this area, mainly
because of their rapidly changing demographics.
                                                                        Beverly
 Olson Flanigan
                                                                        Ohio
 University, Athens
                                                                        (out of
 Minnesota--very Northern)
 
 At 03:12 PM 4/25/98 +0200, you wrote:
   On 25/4/98 Allan Metcalf wrote:
   
    Thinking of Walt Wolfram giving the Tamony lecture in Columbia,
    Missouri, today; and feeling sorry that I couldn't make it to that
  annual celebration of
  American English, got me thinking about Missouri and its language.
  St Louis has the peculiarity of being a Northern speech island in a
  sea of Midland. But has this always been so? Was it the case when Lewis
  and Clark set off on their expedition? Has anybody studied St Louis
  speech of the 19th century?
   
  Allan Metcalf 
  
  This reminded me of the research William Labov, Sherry Ash & associates
  are doing on vowel shift chains. They are convinced that a great
  Northern vowel shift is under way in the northern cities of Chicago,
  Detroit, etc. and are also convinced there's a great Southern vowel
  vowel shift in progress throughout the South. This leaves the cities in
  the middle, Cincinatti and westwards, and here they find that each major
  city is going its own sweet way (Labov, pers. communication 1995). I'm
  not sure what they say about St Louis, but it would be enlightening to
  talk to them about this. At all events the situation they describe seems
  to bear out the three-way division: Northern, Midland, Southern, which
  was recently questioned.
  
  David Sutcliffe
  
   

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 13:37:12 -0500
From:    Grant Barrett  gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DFJP.COM 
Subject: Reply Functions

  This "reply to" option is surely a protocol set up by the list server--I
  really can't see what control I have over it. My inquiry to the (human)
  ADS list operator re my last little [=20] suffix on each line problem
  was ignored, perhaps someone with more patience than I would like to
  nail this one.

No matter how an email program treats the reply-to header, perhaps one could
 check to see that the message is headed in the proper direction by choosing the
 proper button, menu or command that allows one to address any message, new or
 reply.

Also, I am not the listserv master, but as far as I know, it is standard for a
 listserv to default the reply-to address to the original sender of the message,
 not the list itself. This prevents people from hitting the reply button and
 sending what I suspect would be volumes of peer-to-peer mail to the entire
 list.

Finally, in regards to the [=20] at the end of your lines: this is a function of
 MIME mail. In your email program or server, there is bound to be a function
 that makes your messages "MIME-compliant." Turn it off. This is how I solved
 the problem when I had it.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 28 Apr 1998 11:01:42 -0700
From:    Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: Reply-to issue, tech notes

Ross et al,  -- who is this "Al", anyway?

I don't think there is much that can be done about which address gets
automatically put into the "To" field when you choose "Reply"  (or a similar
command) in your emai
======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/28/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 26 Apr 1998 to 27 Apr 1998             98-04-28 00:00:01
There are 5 messages totalling 185 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Thole story (2)
  2. Navy expression
  3. Talent agent lingo
  4. Dialectical Spanish

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Apr 1998 23:07:29 -0500
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: Re: Thole story

 David Sutcliffe wrote:
  
   In the recording of an African American born circa 1855-1860, I have the
   expression "one man a-riding tole mule" (tow mule?). I think he's
   actually saying t'ole mule. Can anyone confirm that "thole" (of a horse
   or other draft animal) can mean "lead", "leading"?

Mike Salovich responded:

 Have you considered that 'tole', or 't'ole' in your retranscription,
 could mean "the  old"?
...     ...
 ....  I've
 also heard "t'ole" in field recordings of southern folk music and blues
 in contexts where substituting "the old" makes a perfectly reasonable
 statement.

I didn't respond earlier because I could only speculate.  What about a
contraction of "that ole" rather than "the ole"?  Would the person who said
"tole mule" also have used the contraction "'tis"?  Wouldn't "the ole" be
contracted as "dole" (but maybe spelled 'tole' so as not to confuse the
reader too much)?

But, as far as I know (or don't know), 'tole' may have been a word with a
specific meaning in the past.

DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 27 Apr 1998 06:07:20 -0400
From:    Steve Harper  sharper[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FOTO.INFI.NET 
Subject: Re: Navy expression

A friend who was on submarines in the 60s sends the following:

Reply-To:  rancox[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]brigadoon.com 
From: "Ran Cox"  rancox[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]brigadoon.com 
To: "Steve Harper"  sharper[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]foto.infi.net 
Subject: Re: Navy expression
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 19:12:00 -0400
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1155


A steady strain applies to one line while an even or balanced strain would apply
 to two or more lines.  For example, we had four lines, bow (number one), stern
 (number four) and spring lines (numbers two and three).  The spring lines were
 crossed to minimize movement parallel to the dock, while bow and stern lines
 restrict movement away from the dock.  An even strain on the spring lines and
 the bow and stern lines was taken.

A steady strain also is taken on lines.  A slack line (one with no strain) tends
 to pop the instant all slack or excess is taken up.  Slack in a line allows
 whatever object it was supposed to be securing to build momentum until the
 instant all slack is exhausted--then must instantly stop tons (often tens of
 thousands of tons) or break.  The latter tends to be more probable, so taking a
 steady strain makes the momentum work in the line's favor.

One of the biggest reasons a steady strain is so close to the hearts of line
 handlers is that a one-, two- or more-inch line that "pops" tends to act on
 line handlers like thick rubber bands do when shooting flies.  When a nautical
 type tells someone to take up the slack (applied to attitude), it is a much
 more severe statement than might be imagined.

Senator McCain definitely meant and did keep a steady strain.  Well done, Sir.
----------
  From: Steve Harper  sharper[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]foto.infi.net 
  To: rancox[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]brigadoon.com
  Subject: Navy expression
  Date: Sunday, April 26, 1998 12:11 PM
 
  Any thoughts?
   
   


At 14:02 4/25/98 -0400, you wrote:
 Can ADSers who are fmr Navy help with question of naval usage? TIME April
 13 p. 62 col. 1 prints this:
 
 "'It's O.K. We knew this was going to happen,' he said calmly. 'Remember,
 steady strain. You gotta keep a steady strain.' McCain, a former Navy
 pilot, made the phrase a mantra during his 5 1/2 years as a POW in Hanoi."
 
 Is this accurate? I seem to recall hearing "take an even strain" but then I
 was in the wrong branch of service, with no rope-handling experience at
 all. Went flipping through Wouk's "Caine Mutiny" but haven't found it yet.
 
 Bernie Kane
 ex-Army dogface '42-'45
 
 

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 27 Apr 1998 06:19:54 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Talent agent lingo

      The Sunday New York Times (April 26, 1998) City Section did a long piece
on the city's young talent agents.  This is from page 10, col 2:

LINGO
_Words of Mouth_

Talent agents have their own jargon, which can be heard at favorite lunch
spots, like Redeye Grill and Trattoria Dell'Arte, both on Seventh Avenue.
Some buzzwords:

_Breakdown_  Summary of theater, film or television project details, like
starting dates and character descriptions, given to agents and casting
directors.  Also, occasional reaction by actors or agents to rejection.

_Generals_  First meetings between actors and casting directors, arranged by
agents.  "I'm sending you out on a bunch of generals."

_Heat_  Positive word on a script:  "That play is generating a lot of heat at
Paramount."

_Log line_  One-sentence plot summary for quick consumption by agents and
studio executives.  For example:  "'Moby Dick':  Man chases feisty whale while
crew gets all wet."

_Ten percenteries_  Talent agencies.  Term derived from the standard 10
percent agencies take on a deal.

_Trailer_ Multi-wheel vehicle where actors hang out between shots.  _Star
trailer_  One-person unit with amenities like full bed and bath and kitchen.
_Double banger_  Two-person trailer with fewer amenities.  _Honey wagon_
Trailer for four.
   JESSIE McKINLEY

PERSONAL:  I might be lecturing on "New York's Finest" at the American Name
Society's Names Institute at Baruch College this weekend.  It's basically the
same stuff as in my December 1996 posting here, but I found some earlier
"Finest" citations.  I sent a $30 check in for the lunch and it was cashed,
but I otherwise got no reply about the thing.  Who knows?

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 27 Apr 1998 09:07:38 -0600
From:    Bonnie Briggs  BBRIGGS[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ADMIN2.MEMPHIS.EDU 
Subject: Re: Thole story

I've heard this expression all my life - to thole(sp?) an animal into a pen or
other enclosure.  I've never seen it spelled but both my father and
grandfather use it as a common word in their vocabulary.

Bonnie Briggs
The University of Memphis


  In the recording of an African American born circa 1855-1860, I have the
  expression "one man a-riding tole mule" (tow mule?). I think he's
  actually saying t'ole mule. Can anyone confirm that "thole" (of a horse
  or other draft animal) can mean "lead", "leading"?
 
  Also (for any Civil War experts out there) this speaker refers to
  cannons and wagons with /bo:ts/ on them passing through Jasper, TX. He's
  either saying "bolts" or "boats". Does anyone know if the unionest
  forces carted boats around East Texas on wagons at the close of the War?
 
  Thanks,
 
  David Sutcliffe

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 27 Apr 1998 17:48:42 -0500
From:    Grant Barrett  gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DFJP.COM 
Subject: Dialectical Spanish

Here's an interesting link to an article called "How To Best Use An Interpreter
 In Court" ByAlexander Rainof, Ph.D., from the California State Bar Journal,
 May, 1980. Vol. 55, No. 5. pp. 196-200.

http://www.electriciti.com/~trey/alexis/crt_terp.htm

Besides discussing problems that can come up when interpreting between different
 Spanish dialects, there are also sprinkled throughout mentions of
 Hispanization/Anglization of words by California Spanish speakers.

Note: the article is horrendous blue text on a grey background. You may want to
 save it as text to your desktop and open it in a word processor.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 26 Apr 1998 to 27 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/27/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 25 Apr 1998 to 26 Apr 1998             98-04-27 00:00:52
There are 2 messages totalling 72 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Thole story (2)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Apr 1998 17:26:55 -0400
From:    Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Thole story

Rather than fetching for "the old"   thole/t'ole, you might want to
consider the fact that even today many South Midland speakers (and South?)
add a liquid after the back vowels, both finally and intrusively before a
following vowel.  I have students at Ohio University who say "Grandmawl"
(open O plus /l/) regularly in both linking and final positions.  One
recently said she doesn't speak "Appalachian" English but her "grandmawl"
does.  (Another example is 'drawling' for 'drawing,' equivalent to
intrusive /r/ in 'drawring'.)  I assume the parenthetic "(tow mule?)" was
in the transcript itself?  If so, it may be acknowledging the above
pronunciation, esp. since the concomitant 'a-riding' suggests SoMid/South
speech.  The meaning refers to the mule pulling a canal flatboat, I would
assume.

The reverse process may be operating in the second citation, with the /l/
of 'bolts' vocalized.  This is common in the Philadelphia/Baltimore area;
how far South it extends would be better known by Don Lance, Michael
Montgomery and others, I suspect.  (I don't hear it in southern Ohio.)  But
this assumes the word is 'bolts,' of course.


At 01:26 AM 4/25/98 +0200, you wrote:
 In the recording of an African American born circa 1855-1860, I have the
 expression "one man a-riding tole mule" (tow mule?). I think he's
 actually saying t'ole mule. Can anyone confirm that "thole" (of a horse
 or other draft animal) can mean "lead", "leading"?
 
 Also (for any Civil War experts out there) this speaker refers to
 cannons and wagons with /bo:ts/ on them passing through Jasper, TX. He's
 either saying "bolts" or "boats". Does anyone know if the unionest
 forces carted boats around East Texas on wagons at the close of the War?
 
 Thanks,
 
 David Sutcliffe
 

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Apr 1998 21:05:18 -0400
From:    Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Thole story

Oops--in my earlier reply to the "thole" query, I attached it to David's
message (below) when I should have linked it to Mike Salovesh's comment on
"the old."  Sorry to both gentlemen!

At 01:26 AM 4/25/98 +0200, you wrote:
 In the recording of an African American born circa 1855-1860, I have the
 expression "one man a-riding tole mule" (tow mule?). I think he's
 actually saying t'ole mule. Can anyone confirm that "thole" (of a horse
 or other draft animal) can mean "lead", "leading"?
 
 Also (for any Civil War experts out there) this speaker refers to
 cannons and wagons with /bo:ts/ on them passing through Jasper, TX. He's
 either saying "bolts" or "boats". Does anyone know if the unionest
 forces carted boats around East Texas on wagons at the close of the War?
 
 Thanks,
 
 David Sutcliffe
 

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 25 Apr 1998 to 26 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/26/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 24 Apr 1998 to 25 Apr 1998             98-04-26 00:00:28
There are 6 messages totalling 374 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. B-E-D
  2. St Louis Blues
  3. Writing prescriptions
  4. A raft of...?
  5. Navy expression
  6. Thole story

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 25 Apr 1998 08:55:06 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: B-E-D

     This cartoon was in the Wall Street Journal, PEPPER...and Salt, 14
February 1962, pg. 14, col. 5.  A man leaves the office, telling his
secretary:

"And if anyone else from the S.B.A., the F.T.C., or the B.D.S.A. calls, tell
them I've gone home to B.E.D."

     My father used to say this all the time--"it's time for B-E-D."
     We have V-E-Ts on this list.  Does "B-E-D" come from the A-R-M-Y?  Or
maybe it was a joke on a Phil Silvers show?  I did the "spelling bee" some
weeks ago; why would anyone S-P-E-L-L the simple, three-letter word "bed"?
     Clearly, I'm in T-R-O-U-B-L-E, and I just can't D-I-V-O-R-C-E myself from
the situation.  Is it related to H-A-double R-I-G-A-N spells HARRIGAN or K-E-
N-N-E-D-Y spells KENNEDY?
     Oh well.  Take off my B-V-Ds, put on my P-Js, and go to....

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 25 Apr 1998 15:12:19 +0200
From:    David Sutcliffe  david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES 
Subject: Re: St Louis Blues

 On 25/4/98 Allan Metcalf wrote:
 
  Thinking of Walt Wolfram giving the Tamony lecture in Columbia,
  Missouri, today; and feeling sorry that I couldn't make it to that
annual celebration of
American English, got me thinking about Missouri and its language.
St Louis has the peculiarity of being a Northern speech island in a
sea of Midland. But has this always been so? Was it the case when Lewis
and Clark set off on their expedition? Has anybody studied St Louis
speech of the 19th century?
 
Allan Metcalf 

This reminded me of the research William Labov, Sherry Ash & associates
are doing on vowel shift chains. They are convinced that a great
Northern vowel shift is under way in the northern cities of Chicago,
Detroit, etc. and are also convinced there's a great Southern vowel
vowel shift in progress throughout the South. This leaves the cities in
the middle, Cincinatti and westwards, and here they find that each major
city is going its own sweet way (Labov, pers. communication 1995). I'm
not sure what they say about St Louis, but it would be enlightening to
talk to them about this. At all events the situation they describe seems
to bear out the three-way division: Northern, Midland, Southern, which
was recently questioned.

David Sutcliffe

 
  David Sutcliffe
 
  Barcelona
 
  PS As this may be of general interest I'll also send edited version to
  the list 
   
   
 

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 25 Apr 1998 11:15:29 -0500
From:    Thomas Creswell  creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET 
Subject: Re: Writing prescriptions

Gregory {Greg} Downing wrote:

  At 04:46 PM 4/24/98 -0500, creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]crown.NET wrote:
   Prescriptivists are people who tell other people what is correct or
  incorrect in
   language.  They prescribe or proscribe words, structures, and the like. A
  typical
   prescriptive "rule." tthough now much discredited, is "Do not end a
  sentence with a
   preposition."  Those who follow this rule do not prescribe or proscribe,
  they simply
   kiss the whip and do what they are told.  The swallow the pill that the
  "expert" has
   prescribed.
   
   It is common for prescriptivists to regard themselves and to expect others
  to regard
   them as having a superior grasp of the language--an admirable, educated,
  sensitive
   sense of all aspects of language--vocabulary, syntax, idiom. etc  Among
  well known
   contemporary prescriptivists are William Buckley, William Safire, and,
  perhaps not
   so well known as the preceding two, Geoffrey Nunberg, who supervised the
  writing of
   usage notes for the most recent edition of the American Heritage Dictionary.
   
 
  Thanks for the review. I too was made aware of the
  prescriptivism/descriptivism distinction as early as my first undergrad
  linguistics course.

I beg your pardon for having needlessly and thoughtlessly characterized the
activities of prescriptive usage experts and having, as a result, put you to
 the
task of writing at such length about the  the prescriptive vs. descriptive
controversy

  My point attempts to build atop that with a bit more
  nuance, given some additional thought and experience beyond the
  rules-of-thumb I was enculturated with close to a couple of decades back. My
  point is simply that prescriptivistic activity is nothing other than the
  very same kind of decision-making activity that is in involved in all
  production of utterances. People decide to say x, not y, or they get
  themselves into the habit of preferring locution a to lobution b. Some
  people make these decisions privately and have "influence" on the larger
  usage of the language only to the extent that other speakers have similar
  preferences or even, in some cases, are somehow directly influenced by the
  usage-decisions and usage-preferences of some of the people whose utterances
  they hear/read. However, some people ("usage mavens") do this quite
  publicly, and achieve influence among people who voluntarily follow their
  opinions on various matters.
 
  Theoretically, if one genuinely wished to be consistently and absolutely
  descriptivist, one would have to have no negative opinions about anyone
  else's usage or lingusitic activities, and in fact would be unable to edit
  one's own oral or written communication. I don't think there are any genuine
  descriptivists (no atheists in foxholes???) -- only folks who present their
  preferences for some usage decisions, and their dislike of others, as
  scientific in an attempt to foreclose dissent. I.e., people who say that
  ordinary speakers are always right (though no one does this consistently, as
  we've seen on this list in re "other x's than y" etc.) and that would-be
  usage mavens are always wrong are simply the mirror-image of usage-mavens
  and their followers, who argue inversely that usage-mavens are always right
  and that the "solecisms" of ordinary speakers are always wrong. Meet the new
  boss, same as the old boss. The specific preferences are opposite, but the
  trend of thought is the same.
 

No descriptivist of my acquaintance says that the prescriptivist mavens are
 always
wrong.

  I think the only sensible way to deal with the problem is to make
  description and prescription two different stages or (in something like the
  hegelian sense) "moments" of lingusitic analysis. One first sheerly
  describes (and, mirabile dictu, even the activities of language mavens and
  those under their sway can be described as one very common aspect of human
  language-activity!!!). ONLY THEN does one separately evaluate -- and the
  evaluation much be done in a clearly spelled-out context, not presented as
  absolute approval or disapproval. For example, some descriptivistically
  studied language-activity x (and x could be the work of would-be
  usage-mavens, or the rules followed by those under their influence) can then
  be evaluated as a function of certain strands of the culture, or as part of
  an attempt by a certain social group to achieve some goal (claiming status,
  etc.), reflecting a certain register, constituting part of the conventions
  of a certain field, etc. Saying that usage-maven activity ("injunctions by
  `experts,'") is the only invalid part of language-activity is to confuse
  description with evaluation-in-a-context. This seems especially shaky in a
  field (linguistics) where (1) descriptivism is seen as crucial, and (2)
  people have to edit their work in order to publish, which involves all kinds
  of picky little prescriptivisms, far beyond the level of pickiness or
  arbitrariness seen in the work of popular language-mavens.

Who is it that has said that "usage-maven activity is the only invalid part of
language-activity?"  Certainly not I.

 
 
   You will note that none of the preceding definitions of _prescriptive_
  refer to any
   activities undertaken by speakers or writers in the process of composition.
   
 
  Thanks for the dictionary definitions. As I recently commented on an essay I
  was given to evaluate, quoting an (of necessity) curt and basic dictionary
  definition when the purpose of the essay is to engage in analysis is not
  always the most powerful of rhetorical strategies.

The definitions were offered to make the point that no dictionary, even one that
 is
avowedly prescriptive,  seems, as I read them, to define prescriptivism as an
activity that is part of the composition process. Perhaps that is not the most
powerful of rhetorical strategies.  Is there some other authority to which you
 think
I should appeal in attempting to find out in what senses a word is usually
 employed?

  What people do in deciding on their own usage-rules is certainly not
  description, is it?

No.  It is neither description nor prescription.

  Description involves leaving things as you find them,
  and just portraying them as carefully as possible. Is there some third
  attitude toward linguistic behavior that is neither descriptive (i.e.,
  simply laying out that which de facto happens, without any evaluation) nor
  prescriptive (i.e., making decisions and imposing preferences prior to what
  de facto happens)? If so, what is it?

I know of no third attitude toward linguistic behavior that is germane to this
discussion, but note that you accurately refer to these as attitudes toward
linguistic behavior, not choice-making strategies in composition.

   My point is that _prescriptive_ is best and most consistently applicable to
 the
   activities of those who tell others how to speak or write.
 
  See above comments and questions.
 
     What speakers and
   writers do is edit as they go along, attempting to make their language
  conform to
   what their experience or training has taught them is standard in the
  circumstances
   in which the speech or writing takes place. Such behavior is not
 prescriptive.
   
 
  See above comments and questions. There is no magic wall of separation
  between people (A) telling themselves what to do, (B) influencing others
  simply by their own practice, without making overt exhortations, and (C)
  laying out their evulations and exhorting others to agree with them. After
  all, (A) and (B) often have major impact on each other -- and both are
  heavily influenced by (C) to the extent that many speakers find
  language-mavens authoritative for whatever reasons.

Perhaps there is no "magic wall," but A and B are compositional activities
 quite
distinct from C, which is prescriptivism.

 
 
  I'm still concerned that the idea that language-mavens are the only evil
  force in language-activity is perhaps simply a function of the professional
  rivalry between modern empirical linguistics and the language-maven
  tradition -- a rivalry one can already see in, for example, the
  Whitney-vs.-Max-M"uller polemics of over a century ago. The suspicion
  becomes especially strong when some people who denounce maven-prescriptivism
  and only maven-prescriptivism also deliver themselves in no uncertain terms
  of flat-out prescriptivistic usage-ideas of their own.
 

If it is a flat-out prescriptive usage-idea of my own to suggest that it is
confusing to use the term prescriptivism to describe the self-editing activities
 of
language users, then I am guilty as charged.  But I don't think it is.

Those who insist upon doing so may, as far as I am concerned, continue to do so.
  If
enough do, well-edited dictionaries will eventually record that sense.
 Meanwhile, I
continue to regard such use as confusing .

  Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or gd2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 25 Apr 1998 11:21:09 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: A raft of...?

A phrase which appears and disappears in Australia is "A raft of..."

Its users seem to be mainly from the
governmental/managerial/labour-union classes, who often refer to
 "a raft of new legislation/issues/concessions" etc.

I hadn't seen or read it for a couple of years, since its last term as a
vogue phrase--now the phrase seems to have found a new life in the last
half-year or so--perhaps related to the change of Federal government
here.

Partridge says
1) "A (very) large number, as in 'A raft of people attended the meeting'
NZ, since ca.1944. Adopted ex US servicemen.

2) 'A number of wagons during shunting' Railwaymen's since ca.1945, same
source as 1).

[although these uses referring to concrete items is currently uncommon
in Oz, the phrase being reserved for abstract concepts-- rc]

The Question: Where did these influential US servicemen derive the term?

Kind regards - Ross Chambers


--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 25 Apr 1998 14:02:11 -0400
From:    "Bernard W. Kane"  bkane[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TIGGER.JVNC.NET 
Subject: Navy expression

Can ADSers who are fmr Navy help with question of naval usage? TIME April
13 p. 62 col. 1 prints this:

"'It's O.K. We knew this was going to happen,' he said calmly. 'Remember,
steady strain. You gotta keep a steady strain.' McCain, a former Navy
pilot, made the phrase a mantra during his 5 1/2 years as a POW in Hanoi."

Is this accurate? I seem to recall hearing "take an even strain" but then I
was in the wrong branch of service, with no rope-handling experience at
all. Went flipping through Wouk's "Caine Mutiny" but haven't found it yet.

Bernie Kane
ex-Army dogface '42-'45

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 25 Apr 1998 19:24:27 -0500
From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Thole story

Since nobody else seems to have responded, at least not to the list, I
guess I'll take a stab at this one.

David Sutcliffe wrote:
 
  In the recording of an African American born circa 1855-1860, I have the
  expression "one man a-riding tole mule" (tow mule?). I think he's
  actually saying t'ole mule. Can anyone confirm that "thole" (of a horse
  or other draft animal) can mean "lead", "leading"?

It took me a while to realize that when you said 'he's actually saying
t'ole mule' you meant something entirely different than I would have
with the same words.

Have you considered that 'tole', or 't'ole' in your retranscription,
could mean "the  old"?  I have heard that form (I wanted to call it a
contraction, but that's not quite right) in the speech of older African
Americans.  It also appears in the speech of some rural southerners not
usually taken to have African ancestors.

"T'ole" for "the old" used to be one of the ways of spelling  specific
words and combinations to give the impression of rural dialects.  I've
also heard "t'ole" in field recordings of southern folk music and blues
in contexts where substituting "the old" makes a perfectly reasonable
statement.

I think your suggestion that "thole" might have been the form  for which
"tole" appears
in the recording is a red herring.  It sure is an interesting
suggestion, though.

--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
    anthropology department
    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 24 Apr 1998 to 25 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/25/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 23 Apr 1998 to 24 Apr 1998             98-04-25 00:00:06
This message contains more text than QuickMail can display. The entire message
 has been enclosed as a file.

There are 13 messages totalling 844 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. other...other than
  2. other Xs than Y
  3. Writing prescriptions (Was Re: (In)flammable; Re: Other X's Than Y) (3)
  4. LAGS dialect data
  5. And now for something really . . . (2)
  6. P.S. on banshees
  7. wailing was:Re: P.S. on banshees
  8. St Louis Blues
  9. Thole story
 10. Writing prescriptions

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 23:25:20 -0500
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: Re: other...other than

 Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 23:21:44 -0500
 To: Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]Eng.Sun.COM 
 From: "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]showme.missouri.edu 
 Subject: Re: other...other than
 Cc:
 Bcc:
 X-Attachments:
 
  I am slogging through email standards documents at the moment.  Twice in the
  same document (RFC 2046, for those of you who're interested) I have found the
  construction "other blah-blahs than foobar ..."  In both encounters, I
  had a bit
  of difficulty parsing the phrase, and so had to re-read it several times.
  Finally I inserted an additional "other" to appease my linguistic
  processor; the
  actual phrases now read:
  
    For other subtypes of "text" other than "text/plain", the semantics of the
  charset parameter should be defined to be identical to those specified
  here for
  "text/plain", ...
  
    Other media types other than subtypes of "text" might choose to employ the
  charset parameter as defined here, but...
  
  
  (Doesn't this make you want to run out and get yourself a whole mess o'
  standards docs?)  Anyway, I'm wondering if the original construction is
  proper,
  grammatically speaking; is "other than" a separable construction?
  Certainly it
  is difficult for me to parse.  Personally I would have omitted the first
  "other"
  in both cases, but the standard was already finalized before I ever set
  my eyes
  on it (and they're rolling around with great abandon there!)
  
  Andrea Vine
  Software i18n consultant
  Sun Internet Mail Server
  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]eng.sun.com
  --------------------
  bite the wax tadpole
 
                                      
 
 If I understand your posting, your "other X's other than Y's" is your
 "correction."  I say "other X's than Y's" and consider your construction
 to have an unnecessary redundancy.
 
 As I asked before: Geek grammar rules?
 
 By the way, we vets say you've misspelled fubar.
 
 
(I had intended the msg with single     to go to ads-l, but Andrea has her
e-mail set up so that replies go to her rather than to ads-l.)

DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 10:22:08 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: other Xs than Y

Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM  asks:
    

I am slogging through email standards documents at the moment.  Twice in the
 same document (RFC 2046, for those of
you who're interested) I have found the construction "other blah-blahs than
 foobar ..."  In both encounters, I had a bit of
difficulty parsing the phrase, and so had to re-read it several times.
Finally I inserted an additional "other" to appease my linguistic processor; the
 actual phrases now read:

   For other subtypes of "text" {other} than "text/plain", the semantics
  of the charset parameter should be defined to be identical to those
  specified here for "text/plain", ...

  Other media types {other} than subtypes of "text" might choose to
  employ the charset parameter as defined here, but...

        [I have re-marked the quoted text with marginal " " and circumpended
         {} around the "other"s that I infer Andrea inserted. -- MAM]

(Doesn't this make you want to run out and get yourself a whole mess o'
 standards docs?)  Anyway, I'm wondering if
the original construction is proper, grammatically speaking; is "other than" a
 separable construction?  Certainly it is
difficult for me to parse.  Personally I would have omitted the first "other" in
 both cases, but the standard was already
finalized before I ever set my eyes on it (and they're rolling around with great
 abandon there!)

Andrea Vine
Software i18n consultant
    

I've seen "other Xs than Y" fairly often and don't recall having any trouble
 with it -- well, maybe the first time I saw it, but I
have long since considered it analogous to, say, "a {different / newer} coat
 than the one he was wearing yesterday". In
fact, I boggled at Andrea's doubling of "other": it seems redundant it ;-)\  .

By the way, I would have been *totally* baffled by "i18n" in Andrea's job title
 if I hadn't already crashed into it where I
work. I am told that it stands for "internationalization" ("i" + 18 letters +
 "n"), and, I think, "i14e" for "internationalize" by the
same principle, these being two extremely long-to-type words (howsoever
 trippingly they may roll off the tongue) that
are in heavy use among those whose jobs involve them.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:05:42 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  gd2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Writing prescriptions (Was Re: (In)flammable; Re: Other X's Than Y)

At 10:40 AM 4/21/98, creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]crown.NET wrote:
 A fully and completely consistent descriptivist attude _does_ account for what
 Greg refers to as the "prescriptivist" decisions that humans make in planning
 and uttering speech. Good dictionary definitions report on the results of
 those
 "prescriptivist" decisions made by humans in their speech and writing.
 
 I think, however, that it confuses the issue to refer to such decisions as
 "prescriptivist."  I prefer to reserve the term _prescriptive_ to refer to
 injunctions by "experts," not to decisions made by speakers/writers.
 

Sorry not to have gotten back about this topic earlier; it's "that time" in
the semester.

Your first para. is quite unexceptionable, and exactly what I had in mind in
sending the post to which you are responding.

Your second para. is a tougher nut to crack. How is it that the definitions
of "[putative] expert," "speaker," and "writer" are set up in such a way as
to exclude the first category from the other two? If "[putatively] expert"
speakers/writers are being defined as somehow distinct from all other
speakers/writers, and only the [putative] experts' prescriptivisms are being
viewed as illegitimate, it seems that some speakers/writers are more equal
than others. Obviously, the grounds for this differential treatment could
not be a general desire to take a fully inclusive, empirical approach to
human linguistic behavior. One wonders if it might not have to do with
professional rivalry between two groups having different approaches to
language-study. Not being a member of either camp, and having learned a good
deal from both camps, I don't have strong side-taking feelings about this
rivalry. But I also don't feel compelled to knuckle under to either side.
I'd prefer to observe them both in a more genuinely empirical fashion, and
see what can be learned from inferring rather than rooting.


At 13:12:22 4/21/98, "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU  wrote:
 Tom Creswell's comments on prescriptivism were good.  Prescriptivism isn't
 all bad; it's actually what we all operate with much of the time, in
 language as well as in other activities.
 

Right, but if we want to think about these matters clearly, two related
criteria that we should bear in mind are consistency and cohesion.


 At 11:25 PM 4/23/98, "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU  wrote:
   If I understand your posting, your "other X's other than Y's" is your
   "correction."  I say "other X's than Y's" and consider your construction
   to have an unnecessary redundancy.
   
   As I asked before: Geek grammar rules?
   

I think I'd probably agree on the subject at hand: you can say "other x's
than y" or "x's other than y," but why would you need to repeat the "other"?
However, to use the phrase "unnecessary redundancy" without explanation or
nuance is to be prescriptivist, right? So I'm back to my consistency
problem. A claim that usage as it actually happens is the only valid
criterion for what language is makes it impossible to talk about errors in
usage -- other than inconsistenly.

Of course, if enough people all started making this doubled-other "mistake,"
we could easily call it yet another example of the status of natural
language as not absolutely logical, in any formal, quasi-mathematical sense.
Or, more generously, we could call the duplicated "other" emphatic
reduplication or the like, as people do with double negatives in English
when they become common enough in practice.


   By the way, we vets say you've misspelled fubar.
   
   

See above comments about dealing consistently with prespcriptivism.


  (I had intended the msg with single     to go to ads-l, but Andrea has her
  e-mail set up so that replies go to her rather than to ads-l.)
  

You also mentioned this about another post maybe four days back. You have to
look at the to-address before hitting send. As on many many lists, some
posters' e-mails will generate a reply to the list, and other posters'
e-mails will generate a personal reply. For example, Tom Cresswell's posts
to ADS-L also generate personal replies, on my end anyway. I'm not sure if
individual posters would even be aware of this issue with regard to their
own posts, let alone being able to do something about it themselves. It may
have something to do with how their email system interfaces with the ADS
listserv program. However, maybe someone on this list has more technically
sound advice. In the meanwhile, it's easy enough to check and change the
address if necessary. I've seen people who don't check to-addresses send
very embarrassing private messages to large lists.

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or gd2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:10:18 -0500
From:    "Timothy C. Frazer"  mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU 
Subject: LAGS dialect data

I am compiling a list of published studies in dialect geography or
sociolinguistics using LAGS (Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States) data.

I have already Larry Davis and Charles Houck's "The Comparatability of
Linguistics Atlas Records."  Any others?

Thanks,

Tim Frazer

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 10:50:27 -0700
From:    Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: Re: Writing prescriptions (Was Re: (In)flammable; Re: Other X's Than
 Y)

}} At 11:25 PM 4/23/98, "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU  wrote:
}}   If I understand your posting, your "other X's other than Y's" is your
}}   "correction."  I say "other X's than Y's" and consider your construction
}}   to have an unnecessary redundancy.
}}   
}}   As I asked before: Geek grammar rules?
}}   
}}
}}I think I'd probably agree on the subject at hand: you can say "other x's
}}than y" or "x's other than y," but why would you need to repeat the "other"?
}}However, to use the phrase "unnecessary redundancy" without explanation or
}}nuance is to be prescriptivist, right? So I'm back to my consistency
}}problem. A claim that usage as it actually happens is the only valid
}}criterion for what language is makes it impossible to talk about errors in
}}usage -- other than inconsistenly.
}}
}}Of course, if enough people all started making this doubled-other "mistake,"
}}we could easily call it yet another example of the status of natural
}}language as not absolutely logical, in any formal, quasi-mathematical sense.
}}Or, more generously, we could call the duplicated "other" emphatic
}}reduplication or the like, as people do with double negatives in English
}}when they become common enough in practice.

One more time - if _I_ had written the standard, I would have put "other" next
to "than".  For readability, I need the "other" next to "than" for some reason
(maybe the way the lines are broken, who knows?).  The initial "other" is
inconsequential, but I left it there to keep from making too many marks on the
printed page so as not to be able to get through it at all.  This is a
by-product of taking a printed page and a blue pen and making changes by hand.

}}
}}
}}   By the way, we vets say you've misspelled fubar.
}}   
}}   
}}
}}See above comments about dealing consistently with prespcriptivism.

And I answered Mr. Lance that I am a vet.  19 years ago, a TA wrote "foobar" on
the blackboard (we didn't have whiteboards in those days), which is the first
time I can remember seeing the term written.   Since then, I have very rarely
seen "fubar", but I have seen "foobar" many times.  I suggest it might be a
computer regionalism; that is, folks who worked on a particular mainframe
 system
tended to have their own jargon.  So IBM 360 folks would say one thing but DEC
TOPS20 folks might say another, while Sperry folks might have had yet another
term.  (To say nothing of Raytheon people.)

These days the lingo tends to be divided into Unix, Windows, and Mac.

}}
}}
}}  (I had intended the msg with single     to go to ads-l, but Andrea has her
}}  e-mail set up so that replies go to her rather than to ads-l.)
}}  
}}
}}You also mentioned this about another post maybe four days back. You have to
}}look at the to-address before hitting send. As on many many lists, some
}}posters' e-mails will generate a reply to the list, and other posters'
}}e-mails will generate a personal reply. For example, Tom Cresswell's posts
}}to ADS-L also generate personal replies, on my end anyway. I'm not sure if
}}individual posters would even be aware of this issue with regard to their
}}own posts, let alone being able to do something about it themselves. It may
}}have something to do with how their email system interfaces with the ADS
}}listserv program. However, maybe someone on this list has more technically
}}sound advice. In the meanwhile, it's easy enough to check and change the
}}address if necessary. I've seen people who don't check to-addresses send
}}very embarrassing private messages to large lists.

And I also replied that I didn't configure my email in any particular way. 
 Here
is my best guess as to what's happening.  My email is sent by a fairly
sophisticated email server.  It probably adds headers to the email which are
 not
frequently added (but allowed by the standard - see RFC 822).  The list
redistribution software probably sees no need to eliminate these extra headers,
and so tacks them on to the forwarded message.  When Mr. Lance hits "Reply" (or
the equivalent), his email client picks what it thinks is the most likely
address to reply to.  This is not dictated by the standard, and so different
email clients behave differently.

Sorry for the tech stuff, but it seems there was a question.
Andrea Vine
Software i18n (and I never seen i14e used!) constultant
Sun Internet Mail Server
--------------------
bite the wax tadpole

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:00:26 -0500
From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
Subject: And now for something really . . .

In re the comment that "we vets would say . . . " something about the
spelling of "foobar":  we have two (2 !) historical derivations in
conflict here.  Historical precedence goes to a sequence which is often
represented by euphemisms:

The root, dating to WWII, was "snafu": Situation Normal, All F(oul)ed
Up.  This led to a series that reached its apogee in  "fubar": F(oul)ed
Up Beyond All Recall.

Computerlandia, that country in which we are all seeking naturalization,
uses a blank word, traditionally spelled "foobar", to stand for "put the
name of a real program or file, or some other identifier, in this
space".  The blank word began life as an inside joke, a backreference to
WWII's "fubar".  It has taken on a life of its own.

There's a comparable insider joke in the name of a commercially produced
program widely sold as a simulation game for teaching the principles of
archaeological excavation.  Its name is "Fugawiland", named after a
mythical Native American group of pathfinders, the Fugawi.

The story goes that when a Fugawi guide would lead a party from another
tribe, he would begin each day by celebrating an ancient secret rite of
the tribe.  He would begin by climbing the tallest tree in the area.
Offering tobacco to the gods of the six cardinal directions (sunrise or
east, the sun's left hand or south, the sun's right hand or north,
sunset or west, up, and down), the guide would recite the secret prayers
of his tribe, always ending with the ritual recitation of the tribe's
name:  "Where the Fugawi?"

--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
    anthropology department
    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!

P.S.:  Honest to God, there really is a simulation program for student
archaeologists called "Fugawiland".  I have used it with some of my
students, usually without telling them of the title's derivation.

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 14:40:30 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

At 4:15 PM -0500 4/23/98, Mike Salovesh wrote:
 Bill King wrote, in re "like a banshee"=frantic:
  
     I've heard it too.  I've also heard "we were just wailing," meaning
  working
   intensely.  Also, "the police were wailing on him" usually means someone
   resisting arrest has police using their billy clubs on him, though not
   screaming like banshees while doing so.
 
 Or is that really "whale", as in "whale the tar out of him"?
 
 I ask in part because I remember a fourth grade teacher who tried to
 teach my class, in Milwaukee, that Moby Dick was a HHHwite HHHwail.  I
 know, the extra H's exaggerate.  So did my fourth grade teacher, in her
 campaign to get us to stop dropping our aitches. Maybe she thought we
 were displaced Cockneys, oping to get back to ome sweet ome.
 
 Yes, I know, "wh" spellings CAN mark initial lip-rounded unvoiced
 vocoids, otherwise known as "aitches" . . .  but that was a totally
 alien pronunciation for Milwaukee.
 The rest of what I remember of that teacher's campaign is that in every
 recess period we tried to outdo each other in inventing total
 incongruities by misusing her model.  I'm still tempted to talk about
 hWoot HWowls, for example.  (Or, considering another thread here, are
 you folks talking about hWowling banshees?)
 
 --  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
     anthropology department
     northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:45:26 -0700
From:    Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: Re: And now for something really . . .

Thank you Mike, for clearing that up.  So apparently "vet" meant "military vet"
as opposed to "computer vet".


}}Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:00:26 -0500
}}From: Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
}}Subject: And now for something really . . .
}}To: ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU
}}Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
}}
}}In re the comment that "we vets would say . . . " something about the
}}spelling of "foobar":  we have two (2 !) historical derivations in
}}conflict here.  Historical precedence goes to a sequence which is often
}}represented by euphemisms:
}}
}}The root, dating to WWII, was "snafu": Situation Normal, All F(oul)ed
}}Up.  This led to a series that reached its apogee in  "fubar": F(oul)ed
}}Up Beyond All Recall.
}}
}}Computerlandia, that country in which we are all seeking naturalization,
}}uses a blank word, traditionally spelled "foobar", to stand for "put the
}}name of a real program 
======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/24/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 22 Apr 1998 to 23 Apr 1998             98-04-24 00:00:54
This message contains more text than QuickMail can display. The entire message
 has been enclosed as a file.

There are 19 messages totalling 554 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Franchise-In-A-Box
  2. Double modal in (somewhat) formal speech
  3. banshee workers (3)
  4. P.S. on banshees (5)
  5. "Died at home" (suicide euphemism)
  6. pomo (3)
  7. wailing was:Re: P.S. on banshees (3)
  8. other...other than
  9. chipper

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 00:48:40 -0700
From:    Truexinvest[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HOTMAIL.COM
Subject: Franchise-In-A-Box

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------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 09:57:03 -0500
From:    Mai Kuha  mkuha[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]INDIANA.EDU 
Subject: Double modal in (somewhat) formal speech

I was happy to hear that Senator Trent Lott produced a double modal during
an interview on the Lehrer News Hour yesterday (4/22). More interesting
yet, it was retained in the on-line transcript:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/jan-june98/lott_4-22.html

Lott's 2nd turn: "(...) I think the time will come when we can hopefully
come to an agreement on what we might can do in this area (...)"

-Mai
.......................................................
Mai Kuha                                "Que me quiten
mkuha[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]indiana.edu                       lo bailao"
http://php.indiana.edu/~mkuha/home.html
.......................................................

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 10:57:27 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: banshee workers

One of my undergraduate students chose to critique an entry from an old
(1984) William Safire book, _I Stand Corrected_, that was prompted by an
assurance from Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell that he and his
colleagues were "working like banshees to get all the material we can".
Safire and some of his respondents assumed that this was a malapropism for
"working like beavers", since banshees are, to quote of them (the readers,
not the banshees), "female spirits who keen, or wail, in Gaelic folklore to
announce the impending death of someone", and not otherwise known to be
particularly industrious.  Another reader suggested an influence from the
presumably taboo "working like coolies", which would have the right meaning
and at least the right final vowel (unlike "beavers").  But it appears that
this was not necessarily a nonce usage by the Senator, since another reader
wrote in from New Jersey to say that her husband used the same expression.
Nexis shows various uses involving dancing, whooping, screaming, howling,
fighting, shopping, and even boffing like banshees, but none with working.
Anyone else familiar with this variant?

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:06:41 -0400
From:    Jesse T Sheidlower  jester[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PANIX.COM 
Subject: Re: banshee workers

Larry Horn wrote:

  One of my undergraduate students chose to critique an entry from an old
  (1984) William Safire book, _I Stand Corrected_, that was prompted by an
  assurance from Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell that he and his
  colleagues were "working like banshees to get all the material we can".
  Safire and some of his respondents assumed that this was a malapropism for
  "working like beavers", since banshees are, to quote of them (the readers,
  not the banshees), "female spirits who keen, or wail, in Gaelic folklore to
  announce the impending death of someone", and not otherwise known to be
  particularly industrious.  Another reader suggested an influence from the
  presumably taboo "working like coolies", which would have the right meaning
  and at least the right final vowel (unlike "beavers").  But it appears that
  this was not necessarily a nonce usage by the Senator, since another reader
  wrote in from New Jersey to say that her husband used the same expression.
  Nexis shows various uses involving dancing, whooping, screaming, howling,
  fighting, shopping, and even boffing like banshees, but none with working.
  Anyone else familiar with this variant?

In HDAS I we have a (small) entry for "like a banshee," with citations for
"comes on like a banshee," "party like a banshee," and the Safire examples.
We felt that anything with "scream" or "howl" should be considered a
transferred application of the usual behavior of banshees, but that these
others should be considered slang.

I think that the "work like a banshee" variant is more likely to exemplify
this loose use of "like a banshee" than to be a mistake for "...like a
beaver," but that's just MHO.

Jesse Sheidlower
 jester[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]panix.com 

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:06:39 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: P.S. on banshees

Correction:  I just altered the search command on Nexis and came up with
two additional cites (besides the Pell-Safire one), one from the Orlando
Sentinel in 1991 (quoting an environmental sculptor) and one from the
Chicago Tribune in 1990 (quoting the village manager of Bolingbrook, Ill.).
It's possible, of course, that these four instances are all isolated ones,
with each speaker performing his (they're all male) own reanalysis of "Xing
like banshees", but it's also conceivable that the expression has in fact
shifted in langue rather than parole for some variety of English.  Any
guesses?

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:38:56 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: "Died at home" (suicide euphemism)

     This is from the International Herald Tribune, 6 April 1998, pg. 1, cols.
1-3:

Wave of Teenage Suicides Stuns a Town
American Community Without Violence Grapples to Find Root Causes
By Pam Belluck
New York Times Service
(...)  In the last three years, Pierre--the capital of South Dakota, though a
city of only 13,000 people--has been wrenched by a series of suicides, most of
them young people.  Eleven people from 13 to 23, including eight teenagers,
have killed themselves.
     The suicides have begun to haunt Pierre (pronounced PEER), which sits
beside the Missouri River and has one high school, one hospital and one
shopping mall.  In the center of this state in the heart of the Great Plains,
Pierre is such a safe place that the police captain rarely locks his house,
and he cannot remember the last time someone so much as stole a car.
(pg. 11, col. 5 continuation)  Still, for a long time, Pierre has been torn
over how to handle the suicides.  Newspaper obituaries of the suicides used
the euphemism "died at home."

     Why "died at home"?  Has this been used before?

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 10:57:13 -0500
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

 Correction:  I just altered the search command on Nexis and came up with
 two additional cites (besides the Pell-Safire one), one from the Orlando
 Sentinel in 1991 (quoting an environmental sculptor) and one from the
 Chicago Tribune in 1990 (quoting the village manager of Bolingbrook, Ill.).
 It's possible, of course, that these four instances are all isolated ones,
 with each speaker performing his (they're all male) own reanalysis of "Xing
 like banshees", but it's also conceivable that the expression has in fact
 shifted in langue rather than parole for some variety of English.  Any
 guesses?

IMHO, The transfer of 'banshee' from one kind of "frenzy-verb" to another
is a normal linguistic process that doesn't have to be "learned" from
someone else and doesn't have to be dialectal (regional, social, ...).  I'm
sure I've heard "working like a banshee" and have a picture of a carpenter,
hoe-hand, cotton-picker, or some other physical laborer working so fast
that his/her movememnts appear to be frantic.  "Screaming like a banshee"
is accompanied ny ph/frenetic or frantic movement as well.  I think I might
even use "banshee" with a variety of verbs to evoke such an image -- maybe
because of the Celtic (mostly Welsh) blood that roils along with the
Teutonic plasma in my arteries and veins.

DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 12:19:59 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

At 10:57 AM -0500 4/23/98, Donald M. Lance wrote:
  Correction:  I just altered the search command on Nexis and came up with
  two additional cites (besides the Pell-Safire one), one from the Orlando
  Sentinel in 1991 (quoting an environmental sculptor) and one from the
  Chicago Tribune in 1990 (quoting the village manager of Bolingbrook, Ill.).
  It's possible, of course, that these four instances are all isolated ones,
  with each speaker performing his (they're all male) own reanalysis of "Xing
  like banshees", but it's also conceivable that the expression has in fact
  shifted in langue rather than parole for some variety of English.  Any
  guesses?
 
 IMHO, The transfer of 'banshee' from one kind of "frenzy-verb" to another
 is a normal linguistic process that doesn't have to be "learned" from
 someone else and doesn't have to be dialectal (regional, social, ...).  I'm
 sure I've heard "working like a banshee" and have a picture of a carpenter,
 hoe-hand, cotton-picker, or some other physical laborer working so fast
 that his/her movememnts appear to be frantic.  "Screaming like a banshee"
 is accompanied ny ph/frenetic or frantic movement as well.  I think I might
 even use "banshee" with a variety of verbs to evoke such an image -- maybe
 because of the Celtic (mostly Welsh) blood that roils along with the
 Teutonic plasma in my arteries and veins.
 
 DMLance

Not really dialectal, then; sounds plausible.  Thanks to Don, and to Jesse.
This confirms the analysis of my student, who saw the extension from
'screaming (frenetically) like a banshee' to 'working (frenetically) like a
banshee' as analogous to the earlier reanalysis of 'counting one's beads'
that presumably led to the shift in conventional meaning of 'bead' from
'prayer' to 'small round object used to keep track of prayers' to 'small
round object'.  Here, the frenetic/frantic movement that's crucial, rather
than the nature or goal of the enterprise.  In the unlikely event that
'banshee' ever ends up meaning simply 'hard-worker', the shift will be
complete.

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 12:34:16 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: Re: pomo

Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU  writes:
    

ANd I must say, he doesn't SOUND like someone on the staff of the OED.  ("I've
 never heard it, so it must be gibberish"
indeed.)
    

And Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU  says:
    

I too was taken aback by David Shulman's reaction to the word _pomo_ and by his
 description of himself as a staff
member of the OED.  Let me point out, however, that Dave has been a major
 contributor to the OED, although
I do not believe he has ever been a staff member.  Let me also point out that
 Dave's comments may perhaps be
influenced by advanced age or poor health, if this is not too patronizing.  I
 hope that Dave will not be judged too harshly
for these comments; he has undoubtedly contributed more to our knowledge of the
 English language than the great
majority of the people on this list.

         

Can we please judge Dave on his own words, rather than on misreadings and
 misquotations? As quoted by Barry Popik,
he actually wrote:
    

      I am on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Unless he can
 explain it, it will never be an English word.  A nonce word, yes, and even
 gibberish, but not English.

    

Not Larry's "I've never heard it, so it must be gibberish", but
        UNLESS [the user of the word] CAN EXPLAIN IT...
 [emphasis added].

The actual comment requires no excuse. Yes, the rest of the quote is grumpy in
 tone, but I might be grumpy too on seeing
an unfamiliar word used without explanation.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:22:17 -0700
From:    Peter Richardson  prichard[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LINFIELD.EDU 
Subject: Re: banshee workers

Mine don't work; they howl.

Peter

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 14:45:58 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: pomo

At 12:34 PM -0500 4/23/98, Mark Mandel wrote:

 Can we please judge Dave on his own words, rather than on misreadings and
  misquotations? As quoted by Barry Popik,
 he actually wrote:
     
 
       I am on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Unless he can
  explain it, it will never be an English word.  A nonce word, yes, and even
  gibberish, but not English.
 
     
 
 Not Larry's "I've never heard it, so it must be gibberish", but
         UNLESS [the user of the word] CAN EXPLAIN IT...
  [emphasis added].
 
 The actual comment requires no excuse. Yes, the rest of the quote is
 grumpy in tone, but I might be grumpy too on seeing
 an unfamiliar word used without explanation.
 
Well, what makes \ME/ grumpy is a lexicographer assuming that a word s/he
comes across that s/he hasn't heard before is automatically "gibberish" or
"a nonce word" unless the user can explain it.  Guilty until proven
innocent?  I'd take the default assumption to be that if you use a word in
print that I don't recognize, it's not (contrary to the tacit assumption
here) an attempt at intentional obscurity on the part of the writer.  I
still maintain that my reading is a paraphrase (albeit an unfriendly one)
of the original John Simonesque remarks, rather than a misreading of them,
but maybe I'm just being grumpy myself.

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 14:52:43 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: pomo

P.S.  Incidentally, a quick and dirty search on Nexis turns up 213
citations of "pomo" since 1/1/97, and even when you eliminate all the
references to Pomo Indians, pomo d'oro, Pomos [Greece] and other
irrelevantia, there are a whole bunch of pomo = 'postmodern' cites.

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 12:05:13 -0700
From:    Bill King  wfking[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GOTNET.NET 
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

Donald M. Lance wrote:

  IMHO, The transfer of 'banshee' from one kind of "frenzy-verb" to another is
  a normal linguistic process that doesn't have to be "learned" from someone
  else and doesn't have to be dialectal (regional, social, ...).  I'm sure I've
  heard "working like a banshee" and have a picture of a carpenter, hoe-hand,
  cotton-picker, or some other physical laborer working so fast that his/her
  movememnts appear to be frantic.  "Screaming like a banshee" is accompanied
  ny ph/frenetic or frantic movement as well.  I think I might even use
  "banshee" with a variety of verbs to evoke such an image -- maybe because of
  the Celtic (mostly Welsh) blood that roils along with the Teutonic plasma in
  my arteries and veins.

  I've heard it too.  I've also heard "we were just wailing," meaning working
intensely.  Also, "the police were wailing on him" usually means someone
resisting arrest has police using their billy clubs on him, though not
screaming like banshees while doing so.
Bill King

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 12:54:38 -0700
From:    Andrea Vine  Andrea.Vine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: wailing was:Re: P.S. on banshees

}}
}}  I've heard it too.  I've also heard "we were just wailing," meaning working
}}intensely.  Also, "the police were wailing on him" usually means someone
}}resisting arrest has police using their billy clubs on him, though not
}}screaming like banshees while doing so.
}}Bill King

Hmm, I tend to associate that with "whaling" rather than "wailing", though I
truly don't know the origin.  Does anyone know the origins of that "teen
 slang"?

Andrea
--------------------
bite the wax tadpole

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 16:19:51 -0400
From:    Jesse T Sheidlower  jester[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PANIX.COM 
Subject: wailing was:Re: P.S. on banshees

Andrea Vine wrote:

  Hmm, I tend to associate that with "whaling" rather than "wailing", though I
  truly don't know the origin.  Does anyone know the origins of that "teen
 slang"?

There are two unrelated words which have fallen together, _whale_
meaning 'to thrash soundly' (often, confusingly, spelled _wail_),
used figuratively in a variety of positive senses, and _wail_ in
its familiar sense, used by jazz musicians to mean 'to perform in
an exciting or satisfying way', and also used figuratively in a
variety of positive senses. Once you get past the jazz period,
it's not possible to tell what comes from where.

Jesse Sheidlower
Random House Reference
 jester[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]panix.com 

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 13:54:57 -0700
From:    "A. Maberry"  maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU 
Subject: Re: wailing was:Re: P.S. on banshees

Please excuse my incompetence, but I deleted the original post that
started this discussion. Wasn't it originally about the odd phrase
"working like banshees" used by a senator? Maybe what we have here is just
a mixed metaphor--I've heard the phrase "working like bastards." Perhaps
the speaker was about to use that phrase, but quickly realizing the public
nature of his interview, merely substituted the inocuous word "banshee."
My memory isn't so good anymore, so if I am rambling-on out of touch with
reality please ignore it.

Allen
maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu
"We have a tough row to hoe if we're going to keep our heads above water."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower(?)

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 23 Apr 1998 16:15:54 -0500
From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
Subject: Re: P.S. on banshees

Bill King wrote, in re "like a banshee"=frantic:
 
    I've heard it too.  I've also heard "we were just wailing," meaning working
  intensely.  Also, "the police were wailing on him" usually means someone
  resisting arrest has police using their billy clubs on him, though not
  screaming like banshees while doing so.

Or is that really "whale", as in "whale the tar out of him"?

I ask in part because I remember a fourth grade teacher who tried to
teach my class, in Milwaukee, that Moby Dick was a HHHwite HHHwail.  I
know, the extra H's exaggerate.  So did my fourth grade teacher, in her
campaign to get us to stop dropping our aitches. Maybe she thought we
were displaced Cockneys, oping to get back to ome sweet ome.

Yes, I know, "wh" spellings CAN mark initial lip-rounded unvoiced
vocoids, otherwise known as "aitches" . . .  but that was a totally
alien pronunciation for Milwaukee.
The rest of what I remember of that teacher's campaign is that in every
recess period we tried to outdo each other in inventing total
incongruities by misusing her model.  I'm still tempted to talk about
hWoot HWowls, for example.  (Or, considering another thread here, are
you folks talking about hWowling banshees?)

--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
    anthropology department
    northern illinois universit
======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/23/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 21 Apr 1998 to 22 Apr 1998             98-04-23 00:00:43
There are 8 messages totalling 296 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. pron question
  2. pron
  3. Pomo (3)
  4. Query: Monophthongization of /aw/ in S. Carolina and Georgia
  5. the life of the mind
  6. (in)flammable

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 02:11:32 -0700
From:    Kim & Rima McKinzey  rkm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SLIP.NET 
Subject: pron question

Gee, I love this list.

Thanks to all of you who have responded both to me personally and to the
list (and to those of you who are meaning to, really).  I've gotten 15
responses thus far and not a single one had any schwafulness (if you will).
These adverbial forms are rarely pron'd in dictionaries - as they are
usually runons.

Rima

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 11:44:34 +0200
From:    David Sutcliffe  david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES 
Subject: Re: pron

To Rima, and the List

Just to round out the survey on -ically,

In my dialect (London area of England) the schwa is practic'ly never
pronounced. I would say that in "accidentally" the schwa is sometimes
pronounced, and in "confidentially" it's always pronounced (for fairly
obvious reasons).

Probably to find English speakers who regularly pronounced the schwa in
the -ically words you'd have to go to bilingual Wales, or the Caribbean,
or to India - that's my guess, any way.

Re: dictionaries: The Collins Spanish (-English ) Dictionary gives the
schwa-less form as the only pronunciation for "practically" but the
scwa-full  form only for "specifically", "tragically", "economically"...
(?)

David Sutcliffe
David Sutcliffe

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 06:06:26 EDT
From:    Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Pomo

     Where am I?  New York City?  Must be!
     I was invited to the 10th anniversary party for New York Press this
Friday.  This "Best of the Mail" is in New York Press, 10th anniversary issue,
April 22-28, 1998, page 32, col. 2-3:

Postmodern, to You
AFTER READING JOHN STRAUSBAUGH'S cover story, "World World" (7/15), I am more
confused than ever about semiotics, Marshall Blonsky and Strausbaugh.  It is
written over the head of an average reader like myself with technobabble and
obfuscation.
     For example, what is pomo?  I cannot find this word in any of the
standard dictionaries I consulted.  The article uses the word on page 13,
column two, and elsewhere.  Even the context does not explain it: "movies, tv,
magazine ads, pomo art, et al."  What is it--a bird, a plane, an esophagus
(remember Mark Twain's use of esophagus?)?  Can Blonsky give us an explanation
in understandable plain English?  And why can't Strausbaugh favor his reader
with a definition, or is he, too, trying to perplex his readers?
     I am on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Unless he can
explain it, it will never be an English word.  A nonce word, yes, and even
gibberish, but not English.
     DAVID SHULMAN, Manhattan
     Aug. 12, 1992

PERSONAL:  Syria and Jordan are both highly recommended, especially for those
who have visited or are afraid to visit Israel and Egypt--or for those who
have enjoyed Greece, Italy, and Turkey.  The tour's archaeologist discovered
the first human sculptures (7000 B.C.) an 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan, and was very
familiar with Denise Schmandt-Besserat (BEFORE WRITING and HOW WRITING BEGAN).
Ugarit and Ebla and Mari were impressive, even if the average tourist will
never begin to understand the wonders of writing and alphabets....One of these
days, I'll get my home web page up.  It'll have on it, among other things, an
original, three-character play--LONELINESS VARIATIONS--based on a song by
Elvis Presley and a scenario in THE WRITER, September 1984.  It'll be
available to anybody....Back to parking tickets.

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 12:02:24 -0500
From:    Thomas Klein  kleint[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUSUN.GEORGETOWN.EDU 
Subject: Query: Monophthongization of /aw/ in S. Carolina and Georgia

Hello everybody:

I am interested in finding out if there is any evidence for the
monophthongal pronunciation of the diphthong /aw/ in the South Carolina Low
Country and along the Georgia coast line. Specifically, I am trying to find
out if words such as 'house', 'now', 'around', 'down', 'out', and 'about'
are pronounced with a monophthong rather than [aw] in these areas. The
particular monophthong I have in mind is cardinal vowel #6, the lower-mid
back rounded vowel represented by the 'open o' IPA symbol. Other
monophthongal pronunciations would be extremely interesting to me as well.
I am interested in this pronunciation for the period after 1950 and for
speakers of European and African descent. I have checked the following
standard references to this point: LAMSAS (online), DARE, and Kurath &
McDavid. All of these sources document diphthongs for /aw/, but no
monophthongs in the areas I'm interested in. Please reply directly to me
rather than to the list. I'll post a summary of responses to the list.


Thanks very much.


Thomas Klein


Visiting Assistant Professor
Linguistics Department
Georgetown University
Washington, DC 20057
kleint[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gusun.georgetown.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 12:11:07 EDT
From:    RonButters  RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: the life of the mind

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Dear Ron,
        Thanks for the reply about the review of Thomas' collection.  I
had to smile at the message getting buried in the heated discussion about
Wendy's.  Isn't that somehow symbolic of the passionate life of the mind
of universities?  Our departmental listserv is now zinging with messages
about the strangle hold that classroom chairs bolted to the floor have on
our ability to create an intellectual climate.
                                        Connie


___________
Connie Eble
Department of English
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
cceble[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]email.unc.edu


--part0_893261467_boundary--

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 12:19:18 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: Pomo

At 6:06 AM -0400 4/22/98, Bapopik wrote:
      Where am I?  New York City?  Must be!
      I was invited to the 10th anniversary party for New York Press this
 Friday.  This "Best of the Mail" is in New York Press, 10th anniversary issue,
 April 22-28, 1998, page 32, col. 2-3:
 
 Postmodern, to You
 AFTER READING JOHN STRAUSBAUGH'S cover story, "World World" (7/15), I am more
 confused than ever about semiotics, Marshall Blonsky and Strausbaugh.  It is
 written over the head of an average reader like myself with technobabble and
 obfuscation.
      For example, what is pomo?  I cannot find this word in any of the
 standard dictionaries I consulted.  The article uses the word on page 13,
 column two, and elsewhere.  Even the context does not explain it: "movies, tv,
 magazine ads, pomo art, et al."  What is it--a bird, a plane, an esophagus
 (remember Mark Twain's use of esophagus?)?  Can Blonsky give us an explanation
 in understandable plain English?  And why can't Strausbaugh favor his reader
 with a definition, or is he, too, trying to perplex his readers?
      I am on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Unless he can
 explain it, it will never be an English word.  A nonce word, yes, and even
 gibberish, but not English.
      DAVID SHULMAN, Manhattan
      Aug. 12, 1992
 


I take it Mr. Shulman hasn't caught any performances of the Pomo Afro
Homos. (If he read the Times as well as New York Press, he wouldn't have
needed to ask.)  ANd I must say, he doesn't SOUND like someone on the staff
of the OED.  ("I've never heard it, so it must be gibberish" indeed.)

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 12:51:34 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: (in)flammable

Victoria Neufeldt  vneufeldt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM  writes:
    
Probably any native speaker of English would understand 'inflammable' correctly,
 but there is a distinct possibility that a
non-native speaker could misinterpret the 'in-' as a negative prefix, since that
 is by far the more common use of this
element; and because the consequences of misinterpretation are potentially
 lethal, it is important to use an unambiguous
form, such as 'flammable,' for all public labels.  This "campaign," which isn't
 just Australian, but at least North American
(both Canada and US) and British as well, does seem to have been successful. 
 Even in everyday language,
'inflammable' is not nearly as common as it used to be.
    

I'm not nearly as confident as Victoria is about "any native speaker of
 English". In general, negative "in-" is much more
common than inchoative (or any other) "in-"; and in specific, the very success
 that she speaks of in the last two
sentences quoted makes it more likely that "inflammable" will be interpreted as
 productively derived from "flammable", and
therefore with the more frequent negative "in-".

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 22 Apr 1998 13:21:38 -0400
From:    Fred Shapiro  fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: Pomo

On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Larry Horn wrote:

  I take it Mr. Shulman hasn't caught any performances of the Pomo Afro
  Homos. (If he read the Times as well as New York Press, he wouldn't have
  needed to ask.)  ANd I must say, he doesn't SOUND like someone on the staff
  of the OED.  ("I've never heard it, so it must be gibberish" indeed.)

I too was taken aback by David Shulman's reaction to the word _pomo_ and
by his description of himself as a staff member of the OED.  Let me point
out, however, that Dave has been a major contributor to the OED, although
I do not believe he has ever been a staff member.  Let me also point out
that Dave's comments may perhaps be influenced by advanced age or poor
health, if this is not too patronizing.  I hope that Dave will not be
judged too harshly for these comments; he has undoubtedly contributed more
to our knowledge of the English language than the great majority of the
people on this list.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
 Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
 Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
 e-mail: fred.shapiro[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 21 Apr 1998 to 22 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/22/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 20 Apr 1998 to 21 Apr 1998             98-04-22 00:00:33
This message contains more text than QuickMail can display. The entire message
 has been enclosed as a file.

There are 20 messages totalling 582 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. (In)flammable (6)
  2. flat
  3. pron question (8)
  4. Tuition
  5. Pron. question
  6. un- & -ate (2)
  7. Sub-additivity

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 00:49:58 -0600
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: Re: (In)flammable

I intended to send this msg to ads-l, but the header on Chambers' ads-l
msgs causes "Reply to" to send the reply to him rather than to ads-l.

 Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 00:44:58 -0600
 To: maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au
 From: "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]showme.missouri.edu 
 Subject: Re: (In)flammable
 Cc:
 Bcc:
 X-Attachments:
 
  Not "un" but "in", and related?
  Somewhere (Australia?) a conscious policy to delete the 'in' from
  'inflammable' was made.It was felt that those speaking English as a
  second language would perceive dangerous goods marked in this way as not
  flammable.
  Is this an example of successful prescription?
  
  Regards - Ross Chambers
 
 There are two _in-_ prefixes, one being a negator and the other referring
 to 'enabling'.  So 'inflammable' refers to an object consisting of a
 substance that may be 'inflamed' when subjected to a heat source above a
 certain temperature -- though this is not the most common use of
 'inflame'.  Discussions of the inappropriateness of the term 'inflammable'
 are typical of dicta offered by prescriptivists who don't want to bother
 doing homework because they already know everything that anyone could
 possibly learn about language by consulting dictionaries etc.

DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 01:14:00 -0600
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: Re: flat

As a native-speaker of adverbial _flat_, I can easily say "She's flat
brilliant," with _flat_ being an adverb rather than an adjectival modifier
of 'brilliant'.  The intonation is different in this sentence than in
"She's flat broke" (meaning she doesn't have any money).  It's also
possible for me to say "She's flat broke" meaning that its flat true that
she's broke.  Syllable-lengthening and pitch contours differentiate between
adverbial and adjectival uses.  I have a strong suspicion that 'flat out'
and adverbial 'flat' are Southernisms.

 At 11:50 AM -0700 4/9/98, Peter Richardson wrote:
  This morning on NPR there was an interview with a survivor of that
  horrible tornado that killed so many in Alabama. Her statement included:
  "...a lotta people who are gonna flat need prayer..."
  
  I'm wondering about the distribution of _flat_ as an intensifier, since it
  appears not to be in DARE. The RHHDAS lists it as an adverb, as in "I'm
  flat broke"--something I heard growing up in Illinois. But this
  intensifying function seems rarer. Any ideas?
  
  Peter
 
 There's also the related (I assume) "flat-out".  I've heard "he can flat
 out play", "he flat-out blew the call", and "he's a flat-out superstar", or
 their equivalents in sportscasterese, and I'm sure it would turn up all
 over the place on Nexis.  The first "flat" above does sound like a
 regionalism to me, though.  (And I wonder about the
 distribution--collocational, not geographic--of the intensifying "flat" of
 "flat broke".  I can imagine "flat-out brilliant", but not "flat
 brilliant", in my own idiolect.)  The OED does have "flat broke" as a
 specific Americanism dating back at least to Bartlett's 1859 Dictionary,
 but then it also has the interesting 1601 cite "I am flat of your mind"
 under the heading of adverbial FLAT = 'absolutely, downright, fully'.  And
 then there's the related postposed "flat" = 'exactly' (three minutes flat)
 or 'completely' (turned me down flat).   They all seem to suggest something
 like 'no two ways about it.'
 
 Larry (Horn)


DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 00:54:11 -0700
From:    Kim & Rima McKinzey  rkm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SLIP.NET 
Subject: pron question

Would any of you care to give me your opinion in an informal survey re the
pronunciation of adverbial -ically?  This would be in words like
authentically, historically, optimistically, etc.

Specifically (right), do you pronounce a schwa between the k and the lee?
(I know, I'm not getting into IPA forms, but most e-mail programs don't
support the fonts.)

Thanks,

Rima

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 14:53:31 -0700
From:    Yongwei Gao  951208[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FUDAN.EDU.CN 
Subject: Re: Tuition

Dear all,

(1). Does anybody use "tuition" in plural form?
(2). Have you heard of "halfback" (northerners who fled to Florida only
to come halfway back home, to the more moderate climes of North Carolina
and Georgia)?

Sincerely,

Yongwei Gao
Fudan University
Shanghai, China

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 04:43:08 -0500
From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
Subject: Re: pron question

Rima McKinzey wrote:
 
  Would any of you care to give me your opinion in an informal survey re the
  pronunciation of adverbial -ically?  This would be in words like
  authentically, historically, optimistically, etc.
 
  Specifically (right), do you pronounce a schwa between the k and the lee?
  (I know, I'm not getting into IPA forms, but most e-mail programs don't
  support the fonts.)
 
  Thanks,
 
  Rima

My speech has no schwa there.  Careful: my native English is "platform
English".

In three of the four words you cite (authentically, optimistically,  and
specifically)
I have trouble accepting a possible back-formation.  My dialect does not
use the words "authentical", "optimistical", or "specifically".  I was
going to suggest that as the "cause" of my lack of schwa in the
indicated position.

Of course, that whole line of argument fails, even in my own dialect(s),
in the face of the fact that "historical" sounds like a perfectly normal
word to me.

Here's an experiment I can't resist: maybe the absence of that
particular feature in my vocabulary means that I might be inclined to
write "authenticly" or "optimisticly"  or "specificly" without an A.
(The spelling checker in Netscape  rejected those spellings,
unfortunately.)

Anybody else care to report on dialect differences and similarities that
might help Rima's survey?  Go ahead, do it!

Please don't try to clutter up my mind with relevant facts.  I've
already made up my mind about what the conclusion ought to say, and God
help the data that refuse to bend to my will.  Rima, I gather, is much
more likely to report what she can back up through her contemporaneous
participation in the observation and your responses to her questions.

--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
    anthropology department
    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 08:29:49 +0000
From:    Victoria Neufeldt  vneufeldt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM 
Subject: Re: pron question

Re: Rima's query about the existence of a schwa between the 'k' and
'l' sounds in adverbial '-ically'; exx.: authentically, historically,
optimistically.

For the three words given as examples, I have no schwa.  But I
wouldn't want to say _never_; I'm also not sure I'd treat all such
adverbs the same, but I can't think of examples just now.
(Background: Canadian Prairies)

Victoria Neufeldt

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 08:41:32 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: pron question

At 12:54 AM -0700 4/21/98, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
 Would any of you care to give me your opinion in an informal survey re the
 pronunciation of adverbial -ically?  This would be in words like
 authentically, historically, optimistically, etc.
 
 Specifically (right), do you pronounce a schwa between the k and the lee?
 (I know, I'm not getting into IPA forms, but most e-mail programs don't
 support the fonts.)
 
 Thanks,
 
 Rima

No, neither I nor my neighbors pronounce a schwa there, and evidence from
misspellings by my students and my kids suggests that -icly would be a more
accurate rendering than the traditionally sanctioned -ically.     (This
from south-central Connecticut, but as I recall the situation in
south-central Wisconsin and northern and southern California was similar.)
--Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:10:01 EDT
From:    CLAndrus  CLAndrus[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Re: (In)flammable

It has been US Federal law for some years that tanks with fuel that will
explode on contact with fire are to be labeled FLAMMABLE, not inflammable,
because of the confusion with in- being a negative as indecisive, involuntary,
etc.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:36:13 +0000
From:    Victoria Neufeldt  vneufeldt[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM 
Subject: Re: (In)flammable

Don, I don't agree with your analysis of the prescriptive issue of
'inflammable' vs 'flammable' (as distinct from the question of
etymology).  Probably any native speaker of English would understand
'inflammable' correctly, but there is a distinct possibility that a
non-native speaker could misinterpret the 'in-' as a negative prefix,
since that is by far the more common use of this element; and because
the consequences of misinterpretation are potentially lethal, it is
important to use an unambiguous form, such as 'flammable,' for all
public labels.  This "campaign," which isn't just Australian, but at
least North American (both Canada and US) and British as well, does
seem to have been successful.  Even in everyday language,
'inflammable' is not nearly as common as it used to be.

The word 'flammable' goes back to the early 19th century;
and 'flammability' is about 200 years older.  They probably developed
"naturally," alongside the corresponding 'in-' forms, but the safety
issue seems to be a pretty recent one.  Quotations in the OED
referring to the problem of ambiguity date from the late 1950s.

Victoria

On 21 April, Donald Lance wrote:

   There are two _in-_ prefixes, one being a negator and the other referring
   to 'enabling'.  So 'inflammable' refers to an object consisting of a
   substance that may be 'inflamed' when subjected to a heat source above a
   certain temperature -- though this is not the most common use of
   'inflame'.  Discussions of the inappropriateness of the term 'inflammable'
   are typical of dicta offered by prescriptivists who don't want to bother
   doing homework because they already know everything that anyone could
   possibly learn about language by consulting dictionaries etc.
 
  DMLance
 

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:32:08 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  gd2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Re: (In)flammable

At 12:49 AM 4/21/98 -0600, you wrote:
  There are two _in-_ prefixes, one being a negator and the other referring
  to 'enabling'.  So 'inflammable' refers to an object consisting of a
  substance that may be 'inflamed' when subjected to a heat source above a
  certain temperature -- though this is not the most common use of
  'inflame'.  Discussions of the inappropriateness of the term 'inflammable'
  are typical of dicta offered by prescriptivists who don't want to bother
  doing homework because they already know everything that anyone could
  possibly learn about language by consulting dictionaries etc.
 
 DMLance
 

Isn't the elimination of the "in-" from "inflammable" actually an example of
linguistic *innovators* (not "tradition"-maintaining prescriptivists) simply
giving in to the descriptivistically observed problem of confusion between
two phonetically identical prefixes of often opposite meanings?

But since you raise prescriptivism, a larger point to think about is that
linguistically prescriptivist activities (i.e., decisions about what is
"better" and what is "worse" usage -- decisions which are in fact
unavoidable in the production of any utterance) are part of what human
beings in fact do, with a good deal of frequency. So a fully and
consistently descriptivist attitude toward language would need to include
and account for prescriptivist activity as one component of its full
description of language.

Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 09:50:33 -0500
From:    Thomas Creswell  creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET 
Subject: Re: pron question

no schwa in my -ically, except, perhaps, in the most careful platform
pronunciation.

Tom Creswell

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:09:41 -0500
From:    Thomas Creswell  creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET 
Subject: Re: (In)flammable

To my recollection, Benjamin Lee Whorf was laargely responsible in
introducing this niggle into American lexicography.  I wonder what a
Nexis search would reveal about the use of the two forms.  Probably that
_inflammable_ is used more frequently in contexts involving things that
will burn.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:21:04 -0500
From:    Thomas Creswell  creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET 
Subject: Pron. question

Pace Mike Salovesh, my guess about the "cause" of the schwaless
pronunciation of the _-ically_ words is that the driving force is one
that is powerful in all speech--indolence.  If saying it in an easier
way, one that involves less energy but still is generally
understandable, that way becomes common  Viz "apern" (apron); Wensdy
(Wednesday);
"Jeetjet?" (Did you eat yet?), etc...

Tom Creswell

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:40:04 -0500
From:    Thomas Creswell  creswell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CROWN.NET 
Subject: Re: (In)flammable

A fully and completely consistent descriptivist attude _does_ account for what
Greg refers to as the "prescriptivist" decisions that humans make in planning
and uttering speech. Good dictionary definitions report on the results of those
"prescriptivist" decisions made by humans in their speech and writing.

I think, however, that it confuses the issue to refer to such decisions as
"prescriptivist."  I prefer to reserve the term _prescriptive_ to refer to
injunctions by "experts," not to decisions made by speakers/writers.

Gregory {Greg} Downing wrote:

  At 12:49 AM 4/21/98 -0600, you wrote:
    There are two _in-_ prefixes, one being a negator and the other referring
    to 'enabling'.  So 'inflammable' refers to an object consisting of a
    substance that may be 'inflamed' when subjected to a heat source above a
    certain temperature -- though this is not the most common use of
    'inflame'.  Discussions of the inappropriateness of the term 'inflammable'
    are typical of dicta offered by prescriptivists who don't want to bother
    doing homework because they already know everything that anyone could
    possibly learn about language by consulting dictionaries etc.
   
   DMLance
   
 
  Isn't the elimination of the "in-" from "inflammable" actually an example of
  linguistic *innovators* (not "tradition"-maintaining prescriptivists) simply
  giving in to the descriptivistically observed problem of confusion between
  two phonetically identical prefixes of often opposite meanings?
 
  But since you raise prescriptivism, a larger point to think about is that
  linguistically prescriptivist activities (i.e., decisions about what is
  "better" and what is "worse" usage -- decisions which are in fact
  unavoidable in the production of any utterance) are part of what human
  beings in fact do, with a good deal of frequency. So a fully and
  consistently descriptivist attitude toward language would need to include
  and account for prescriptivist activity as one component of its full
  description of language.
 
  Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 09:29:34 PDT
From:    barbara harris  GRADMA[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UVVM.UVIC.CA 
Subject: Re: pron question

Re the pronunciation of -ically: mostly, I have -icly, except in very careful
speech (but isn't it difficult to catch yourself actually - 4 syllables -
saying something!) My background is Southern Ontario up to the age of 25,
and  Victoria, British Columbia, ever since (more than 30 yrs.)

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 13:10:06 -0400
From:    Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: Re: pron question

Another similar word is 'accidentally,' which I increasingly see spelled
'accidently'--and why not?


At 08:41 AM 4/21/98 -0400, you wrote:
 At 12:54 AM -0700 4/21/98, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
  Would any of you care to give me your opinion in an informal survey re the
  pronunciation of adverbial -ically?  This would be in words like
  authentically, historically, optimistically, etc.
  
  Specifically (right), do you pronounce a schwa between the k and the lee?
  (I know, I'm not getting into IPA forms, but most e-mail programs don't
  support the fonts.)
  
  Thanks,
  
  Rima
 
 No, neither I nor my neighbors pronounce a schwa there, and evidence from
 misspellings by my students and my kids suggests that -icly would be a more
 accurate rendering than the traditionally sanctioned -ically.     (This
 from south-central Connecticut, but as I recall the situation in
 south-central Wisconsin and northern and southern California was similar.)
 --Larry
 

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 10:52:21 -0700
From:    Peter Richardson  prichard[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LINFIELD.EDU 
Subject: Re: pron question

Accidentally is another kettle of fish of a different color for me. I
don't have the shwa in historically, but it's there in accidentally. I
suspect the t's the reason.

Peter

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 13:12:22 -0600
From:    "Donald M. Lance"  engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 
Subject: un- & -ate

The User's Manual for UULite 3.0 says "One of UULite's main objectives is
to simplify the process of undecoding files on the Mac."  Passim, one finds
"uuencoding" alongside "uuundecoding."  Some time ago I remember seeing
"unencoding."  Geek grammar rules?

On the front page of the Fri, Apr 17, issue of USA Today, there was a story
referring to some members of a group doing certain tasks and others
administrating the program under discussion.  I failed to save the paper,
and my memory has failed to resurrect details of the story other than the
bare facts focusing on the word to which I'm drawing your attention.

Tom Creswell's comments on prescriptivism were good.  Prescriptivism isn't
all bad; it's actually what we all operate with much of the time, in
language as well as in other activities.

I was away for three weeks and have some comments on topics no longer being
discussed on ads-l.  Freshman (and even sophomore) comp courses are
interesting cultural phenomena.  A substantial part of comp courses is
acculturation, with writing being a secondary vehicle in the education
process.  Note the kinds of readings that English departments tend to
require for these courses -- not what the students would have chosen, but
what the literature and rhetoric professors think our young SHOULD read.
And they are asked to write papers that aren't like anything else the
students will encounter in their working lives, though these essay
assignments serve as a check for the instructor to see whether the student
has dealt the assignment appropriately.  Not always, of course, and not
always so cut-n-dried.  In research universities with big English
departments, TAships also have an acculturation function for graduate
students who are learning how to be English professors.  (I went to a Jim
Sledd session at CCCC, so some may think my brain got infected with some
Sleddian nonsense that is reflected in this posting.)

DMLance

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Apr 1998 13:28:08 -0700
From:    "A. Vine"  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: Re: un- & -ate

Donald M. L
======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/21/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 19 Apr 1998 to 20 Apr 1998             98-04-21 00:03:08
There is one message totalling 38 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Chinglish

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 20 Apr 1998 17:20:37 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: Re: Chinglish

Yongwei Gao  951208[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FUDAN.EDU.CN  writes:
      

1) Could anybody find anything unidiomatic with "Despite the Asian financial
 crisis, Shanghai plans to introduce US$4
billion in contracted foreign investment this year, according to the Shanghai
 Foreign
Investment Working Meeting held on April 11", a sentence taken from a local
 English newspaper?
      

IMHO, it's clumsy and rambling, but no more so than what I'd expect in any
 American newspaper's financial section
trying to get everything into the lead sentence. The uses of "introduce" and
 "contracted" look a *little* strange to me, but
I'm not familiar enough with American (or British) financialspeak to know if
 that's just because I don't know those
jargons.

Oops, hey there. That sentence was so long I fell asleep before the end. I would
 not say or accept "according to the ...
Meeting". Meetings don't say things. "According to an announcement issued by the
 ... Meeting" would be OK by my
lights. One might argue that "Meeting" actually refers to the group of people
 who met or the organization comprising them
or their groups, but that claim would be belied by the modifier "held on April
 11", which can apply only to a "meeting" as
an event.
      

2) Has "on the cusp of" (e.g. on the cusp of the millennium) become a set
 phrase?
      

Yeah, dammit. This one seems to be used synonymously with "verge" or
 "threshold", whereas a cusp belongs between
two things. You could argue that this is the cusp between two millennia, but I
 still don't like it. So here's my verdict: it's
idiomatic, but it shouldn't be.  grump, grump 

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
          Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 19 Apr 1998 to 20 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/20/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 18 Apr 1998 to 19 Apr 1998             98-04-20 00:00:36
There are 2 messages totalling 68 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Virtual Graffito
  2. Chinglish

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 19 Apr 1998 21:33:43 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: Virtual Graffito

Australia is currently involved in its most extensive industrial turmoil
for many years, precipitated by the dismissal of union stevedores and
their replacement by non-union labour. The employer involved is headed
by one Chris Corrigan.

The union and the government's Dept of Industrial Relations are using
the internet for dissemination of information.

However the graffito seen at a Sydney picket line sight reading;

"Corrigan's Website http://www.scab" is unlikely to be available on any
browser!

Solidarity!- Ross Chambers


--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 20 Apr 1998 09:51:37 -0700
From:    Yongwei Gao  951208[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FUDAN.EDU.CN 
Subject: Re: Chinglish

Hi, everybody!

Two questions today:
1) Could anybody find anything unidiomatic with "Despite the Asian
financial crisis, Shanghai plans to introduce US$4 billion in contracted
foreign investment this year, according to the Shanghai Foreign
Investment Working Meeting held on April 11", a sentence taken from a
local English newspaper?
2) Has "on the cusp of" (e.g. on the cusp of the millennium) become a
set phrase?

Thanks.

Yongwei Gao
Fudan University,
Shanghai, China

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 18 Apr 1998 to 19 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/19/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 17 Apr 1998 to 18 Apr 1998             98-04-19 00:00:49
There is one message totalling 74 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Call: LASSO-27

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 18 Apr 1998 16:38:20 -0700
From:    Garland D Bills  gbills[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UNM.EDU 
Subject: Call: LASSO-27

          Call for Papers
            LASSO XXVII
        27th Annual Meeting of the
    Linguistic Association of the Southwest
(meeting jointly with WECOL, Western Conference on Linguistics)

        October 9-11, 1998
        Arizona State University
        Tempe, Arizona

Invited Speaker:  Jane H. Hill (U of Arizona)
Presidential Address:  Robert D. King (U of Texas-Austin)

Proposals for papers in any area of linguistics will be considered. For
the 1998 meeting at Arizona State University, submissions regarding
languages of the Southwest are particularly encouraged. We also especially
solicit graduate student papers, which may be submitted following the
meeting for consideration for the Helmut Esau Prize, a $250 cash award
made annually by LASSO.

Presentation time for papers will be limited to twenty minutes plus ten
minutes for discussion.

THE DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS IS JUNE 15, 1998. Notification of
acceptance of papers will be sent out by August 1, 1998. Only one abstract
as single author and a second as co- author will be accepted from any
individual.

Abstracts must be no longer than one page (maximum of 250 words) and
should summarize the main points of the paper and explain relevant aspects
of the data, methodology, and argumentation employed. Keep use of special
font items (e.g. phonetic symbols, diacritic marks, branching diagrams,
logical notation) to a bare minimum. Abstracts of accepted papers will be
published exactly as received in a booklet for distribution at the
meeting. At the beginning of your abstract place the paper title, and at
the end of an e-mailed abstract (or on a separate page of a mailed
abstract) repeat the title along with your name, affiliation, mailing
address, telephone number, and e-mail address.

It is strongly preferred that abstracts be submitted by e-mail. Send to:
        gajill[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]unix1.sncc.lsu.edu
In the absence of e-mail, or if your abstract contains any special
symbols, send one hard copy of the abstract with a diskette (labeled for
operating system and word processing program) to:
        Jill Brody
        Department of Geography & Anthropology
        Louisiana State University
        Baton Rouge, LA 70803-4105 USA
        Tel. 504-388-6171

LASSO presenters are encouraged to submit their polished papers to be
considered for publication in the _Southwest Journal of Linguistics_.

Presentation of papers at the LASSO annual meetings is a privilege of
membership in LASSO; 1998 dues must be paid by June 15 in order for your
abstract to be considered. Annual dues for individuals are US$15.00
(US$7.50 for students, retired persons, and those not employed). To pay
dues or for additional information, contact:
        Garland D. Bills, Executive Director, LASSO
        Department of Linguistics
        University of New Mexico
        Albuquerque, NM  87131-1196  USA
        Tel.: 505-277-7416
        Fax: 505-277-6355
        E-mail: gbills[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]unm.edu

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 17 Apr 1998 to 18 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/18/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 16 Apr 1998 to 17 Apr 1998             98-04-18 00:03:20
There is one message totalling 18 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Submit Info on a new e-zine/list search engine

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 17 Apr 1998 15:18:31 -0500
From:    search[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BIODATA.NET
Subject: Submit Info on a new e-zine/list search engine

Dear ads-l[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uga.cc.uga.edu 4/17/98
We mail you this understanding that you manage/publish a list and/or emagazine
by email or the web.
If not we ask you to forgive us. You will never receive this message again.

Just to inform that you may submit your list or emagazine in a new exrtremely
 easy
to use, search and submit seach engine excluisve for elecronic publishing.
best regards  Phil Clearwater
http://www.biodata.net

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 16 Apr 1998 to 17 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/17/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 15 Apr 1998 to 16 Apr 1998             98-04-17 00:01:28
There are 8 messages totalling 269 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Mike Linn asks for some help
  2. Turkey turkey turkey
  3. Congaree Swamp; Gullah
  4. The Parrot
  5. Oops (4)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 09:40:08 -0400
From:    "William A. Kretzschmar"  billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ATLAS.UGA.EDU 
Subject: Mike Linn asks for some help

Our colleague Mike Linn is on an exchange in Northern Russia (where there
is still lots of snow!), and has asked me to convey the following two
requests for help to the list:

 Could you see if anyone on the ADS list or some one you know
 could find the address of K.  Nordenstam.  He has two tables,  Tables
 1.1 and 1.2   in Trudgill's  Accomodation between Dialects  which
 were in  Svenskan i Norge   published by Gothenberg:  University
 Press.

 Second, in Anthony Krock's article, "Towards a Theory of Dialects" (it is
 in the first edition [of the Allen and Linn *Dialects and Language
 Variation*]) there are some tables from an article by G Mahl. The copyright
 has passed from the publisher to the author so I need to find Mahl and get
 his permission.  I didn't bring the manuscript or the first edition with
 me so I can't be more informative.

Mike is looking for these people so he can clear copyrights for the
second edition of his book.

Thanks on Mike's behalf.

Regards, Bill
************************************************************************
Bill Kretzschmar                Phone:    706-542-5099
Director, Linguistics Program   FAX:      706-542-2897
317 Park Hall                   Internet: billk[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]atlas.uga.edu
University of Georgia           Atlas Phone: 706-542-2246
Athens, GA  30602-6205          Atlas Web Page: http://hyde.park.uga.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:45:39 EDT
From:    AAllan  AAllan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Turkey turkey turkey

A correspondent inquires:

"The word 'turkey' is used today in bowling to denote three strikes in a row.
Do you have any references as to why the term is used and when it was first
used?"

I don't. I'm hoping somebody does.

Thanks - Allan Metcalf

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:06:29 +0200
From:    David Sutcliffe  david.sutcliffe[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TRAD.UPF.ES 
Subject: Congaree Swamp; Gullah

Dear List,

I have been working on the Ex-Slave Recordings (recordings of African
Americans born before the Civil War)and on other sources of earlier
African American Vernacular English (AAVE). I already have enough
evidence to suggest very strongly that there was a Gullah-like variety
in widespread use in the South, during the 19th century.

Now, I've come across the writings of ECL Adams which recreate the AAVE
in use in or near the Congaree Swamp in central South Carolina, in the
earliest years of the 20th century. The Congaree Swamp is around 150
miles inland from  the Gullah Coast, and yet surprisingly the dialect
is/was evidently very Gullah-like. In fact (judging from Adam's
evidence) it is/was linguistically half way between AAVE as we know it
and Gullah. So it seems to provide the missing link that many linguists
have assumed was not there.

I'd be very interested in hearing more about this Congaree speech, if
subscribers have more information (my only source is excerpts from Adams
in Harold Courlander's African American Anthology).

 I'd also be glad to hear of any other evidence for a 19th century
Plantion Creole (or semi-creole) outside the Gullah area as such, or in
fact of any survival of archaic AAVE forms of any nature in the
continental United States.

Thanks, in anticipation

David Sutcliffe
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Rambla 30-32
08002 Barcelona

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 13:16:31 -0400
From:    "Alan Baragona (by way of Alan Baragona  baragonasa[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vax.vmi.edu )"
          Alan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VMI.EDU 
Subject: The Parrot

A lovely little parable for you.

Alan
===================================

THE PARROT


 Meyer, a lonely widower, was walking home along Delancy Street one day
 wishing something wonderful would happen into his life when he passed a Pet
 Store and heard a squawking voice shouting out in Yiddish:

 "Quawwwwk...vus macht du...yeah, you...outside, standing like a
 schmuck...eh?"

 Meyer rubbed his eyes and ears. He couldn't believe it!.  The proprietor
 sprang out of the door and grabbed Meyer by the sleeve.  "Come in here,
 fella, and check out this parrot..."

 Meyer stood in front of an African Grey that cocked his little head and
 said:  "Vus?  Kenst reddin Yiddish?"

 Meyer turned excitedly to the store owner.  "He speaks Yiddish?"

 "What did you expect?  Chinese maybe?"

 In a matter of moments, Meyer had placed five hundred dollars down on the
 counter and carried the parrot in his cage away with him. All night he
 talked with the parrot.  In Yiddish.  He told the parrot about his
 father's adventures coming to America.  About how beautiful his mother
 was when she was a young bride.  About his family. About his years of
 working in the garment center.  About Florida. The parrot listened and
 commented.  They shared some walnuts.  The parrot told him of living in
 the pet store, how he hated the weekends.  They both went to sleep.

 Next morning, Meyer began saying his prayers.  The parrot demanded to know
 what he was doing and when Meyer explained, the parrot wanted to pray too.
 Meyer went out and hand-made a miniature yamulke [skullcap] for the
 parrot.   The parrot wanted to learn to read Hebrew so Meyer spent weeks
 and months, sitting and teaching the parrot, teaching him Torah. In time,
 Meyer came to love and count on the parrot as a friend and a Jew.  He was
 lonely no more.

 One morning, on Rosh Hashonah, Meyer rose and got dressed and was about to
 leave when the parrot demanded to go with him. Meyer explained that a
 synagogue was not place for a bird but the parrot made a terrific
 argument and was carried to the synagogue on Meyer's shoulder.  Needless
 to say, they made quite a spectacle, and Meyer was questioned by
 everyone, including the Rabbi.  At first, he refused to allow a bird into
 the building on the High Holy Days but Meyer convinced him to let him in
 this one time, swearing that parrot could pray.  Wagers were made with
 Meyer.  Thousands of dollars were bet (even odds) that the parrot could NOT
pray, could not speak Yiddish or Hebrew, etc. All  eyes were on the African
Grey during services. The parrot perched on  Meyer's shoulder as one prayer
and song passed - Meyer heard not a peep  from the bird.  He began to become
annoyed, slapping at his shoulder and mumbling under his breath, "Pray
already!"

 The parrot said nothing.

 "Pray...parrot, you can pray, so pray...come on, everybody's looking at you!"

 The parrot said nothing.

 After Rosh Hashanah services were concluded, Meyer found that he owed his
 synagogue  buddies and the Rabbi over four thousand dollars.  He marched
 home, pissed off, saying nothing.  Finally several blocks from the temple
 the bird began to sing an old Yiddish song and was happy as a lark.
 Meyer stopped and looked at him.

 "You miserable bird, you cost me over four thousand dollars.  Why?  After
 I taught you the morning prayers, and taught you to read Hebrew and the
 Torah. And after you begged me to bring you to a synagogue on Rosh Hashona,
 why? Why did you do this to me?"

 "Don't be a schmuck," the parrot replied.  "Think of the odds on Yom Kippur!"
Alan Baragona
alan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]vmi.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 14:20:20 -0400
From:    Alan Baragona  baragonasa[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VAX.VMI.EDU 
Subject: Oops

I apologize for sending the little story about the parrot to the list.  I
was mailing it to a group of friends and must have accidentally clicked on
the ADS-L address as well.

Sorry.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:25:52 -0700
From:    Barbara Nelson  bdn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SOFTBREW.COM 
Subject: Re: Oops

I loved the "little story".  May I pass it on to friends?

Barbara Nelson who usually just lurks

-----Original Message-----
From:   Alan Baragona [SMTP:baragonasa[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VAX.VMI.EDU]
Sent:   Thursday, April 16, 1998 11:20 AM
To:     ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU
Subject:        Oops

I apologize for sending the little story about the parrot to the list.  I
was mailing it to a group of friends and must have accidentally clicked on
the ADS-L address as well.

Sorry.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 14:31:48 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Oops

At 11:25 AM 4/16/98 -0700, you wrote:
 I loved the "little [talking parrot] story".  May I pass it on to friends?
 
 Barbara Nelson who usually just lurks
 

It's been all over the internet for awhile, without ascription. Willy nilly,
it seems to have become public domain by now -- internet urban folklore?

Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 17:18:17 -0500
From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Oops

Alan Baragona wrote:
 
  I apologize for sending the little story about the parrot to the list.  I
  was mailing it to a group of friends and must have accidentally clicked on
  the ADS-L address as well.
 
  Sorry.

I asked MY parrot about that.  All he said was "Nu, so what do you think
the odds are going to be?"

--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
    anthropology department
    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 15 Apr 1998 to 16 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/16/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 14 Apr 1998 to 15 Apr 1998             98-04-16 00:01:14
There are 4 messages totalling 260 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. raunchy [long]
  2. IAWE for Creolist and ADS
  3. Swallows & Amazons (for ever) (2)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 15 Apr 1998 09:53:01 +0000
From:    Jim Rader  jrader[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM 
Subject: Re: raunchy [long]

Ms. Gibbens--

The theories on the source of _raunchy_ that you have collected are,
as I'm sure you can see, somewhat contradictory.  Below I give an
account of the data available to me on the word.

The earliest attestations of _raunchy_ associate it with the U.S.
Army Air Force.  You mention the cite from _Forum & Century_, July,
1939, 45/1 (an article by one R.B. Hubler):  "Depending on how good
or how 'raunchy' we [Air Force cadets at Randolph Field, Texas] were,
we drilled fron one to three hours in the torrid heat."  This is in
Wentworth/Flexner and Chapman, and is also the earliest cite in the
OED (I haven't seen the original text).  The next evidence is
glossarial, from a "Glossary of Army Slang" issued by the Public
Relations Division of the U.S. Army:  _raunchy_ "a name applied to
anything that is in bad shape or dirty (Air Corps)" (reproduced in
_American Speech_, v. 16, no. 2, Oct., 1941).  This definition
reappears in glossaries and dictionaries of U.S. armed forces slang
into the '50's.  _AAF:  The Official Guide to the Army Air Forces_
(N.Y.: Pocket Books, 1944) defined _raunchy_ as "sloppy flying
technique--AAF vernacular" (p. 369/1) (presumably the editors didn't
realize an adjective should be defined with an adjective).

The next textual cites we have for _raunchy_ are from 1944:  "The
boys all liked him, said he was a 'raunchy guy'"  (John McCrary & D.
Sherman, _First of the Many: A Journal of Action with Men of the
Eighth Air Force_, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1944, p. 103) [interpret
this as you will]; "You could hear instructors muttering to those
raunchy draftees: 'Look at them cadets; why can't you march like
that?'" (Michael Straight in _The New Republic_, Apr. 24, 1944, p.
558).

Some later cites with military associations:  "These elegant
appointments contrasted with the shirt, and with his garrison cap,
'raunchy' as it was then called, to a degree hardly exceeded by any
new air cadet's carefully soiled and broken headgear" (James Gould
Cozzens, _Guard of Honor_, Harcourt, Brace, 1948); "This was a good
gutty U.S. Army Eighth Air Force Field in World War II. Its young
men, or at least those who survived their tour of duty, were mainly
gay guys [sic!], lived life to the full, were less 'military' than
any other branch of the service, wore 'raunchy' caps and sometimes
silk scarves and, between missions, were in the oat-sowing business
in London" (article with byline of Bob Considine, International News
Service, printed in the _Springfield [Mass.] Union_, July 16, 1951,
p. 6); "...--one of the bitter, washed-out pilot type, or the raunchy
go-to-hell type..." (Hugh Fosburgh, _View from the Air_, Scribner,
1953, p. 50).

Our non-military cites begin with _Time_, Sept. 26, 1955, p. 98:
"Father Lion does not indulge in such violent exertions.  The king of
beasts reclines in raunchy grandeur, and hardly ever does anything
more than raise his head to peer weakly through a cloud of flies at
the antelope who pass disdainfully a few feet from where he lies...";
and _Time_, Apr. 9, 1956, p. 53:  "Her dubious distinction:  she gave
up fancy footwork to become a sleep-in secretary for Argentina's
raunchy ex-Dictator Juan Peron, 60."  [Do the _Time_ authors really
grasp what the word means?]

Finally, a couple of others from the '50's:  "...clad in a raunchy
sweatshirt and a pair of khaki jeans filthier than Mr. Cleary's
buckskins" (Leslie Waller, _Phoenix Island_, Lippincott, 1958, p.
173); "...the nice raunchy tide-smell of the lake water..." (Jack
Kerouac, _The Dharma Bums_, Viking, 1958, p. 91).

Not until the mid-'60's does _raunchy_ become, at least in print,
something of a vogue word with thereafter dozens of cites from many
sources, and with senses ranging from "seedy" to "smutty,
pornographic" to "foul-smelling."  At least in journalism, this word
is still very much alive on both sides of the Atlantic; Nexis produced
mountains of cites, 923 for 1998 alone.  The usual sense seems to be
"indecent, off-color."

I am curious where you found the hypothesis that _raunchy_ was "RAF
slang that originated during the time that British soldiers were
getting killed in large numbers" [World War I?, but there is no early
British evidence for the word as far as I know--in fact, no evidence
outside North America before the '70's].  I can find only one
possible echo of such a notion.  The Merriam publication _Word Study_
(v. 28, no. 1, Oct., 1952, p. 5) has the following note:

- A. H. Roberts, a student in the classes of William J. Griffin at
- George Peabody College, noted in a description of cowboy riding
- [unfortunately the actual cite is not given--JLR] a word that
- recalled Chaucer to him.  The writer remarked that sometimes the
- _raunchiest_ looking horses buck off the best riders.  The word
- reminded him of _rouncy_ as it appears in the _Canterbury Tales_
- (1.390) [Middle English _rouncy_, referring to a horse, has no
- etymological bearing on _raunchy_--JLR]  As employed by cowboys and
- others in the South, it means anything or anyone substandard.  The
- term does not appear in Ramon F. Adams's _Western Words_.

This note elicited a letter from one J. Buckminster Ranney, Dept. of
Speech, Ohio Northern University, dated Dec. 16, 1952:

- Re page five of the October 1952 WORD STUDY and the word
- _raunchiest_, a comment is herewith noted.
- The most common form of the word, to my knowledge, is the simple
- adjective, _raunchy_.  I suspect that the word was introduced by the
- British Air Force Cadets [sic] at the Southern U.S. Air Force Bases
- in 1942.  _Raunchy_ was adopted by the then USAAF and applied to all
- US Cadets who were, as stated by Roberts, 'substandard' in uniform or
- manner.

This portion of the letter was published as a note in the April,
1953, issue of _Word Study_, but no one at Merriam seems to have
followed up the matter by inquiring of Mr. Ranney how he came to the
conclusion he did.  Pending further evidence, the British hypothesis
is groundless.

OED2 has an entry for _ranchy_ that seems to equate the word with
_raunchy_.  It labels the word "U.S. Slang" and illustrates it with
two quotes from British authors:  Arthur Morris Binstead (1861-1914),
a humorist cited dozens of times in the OED, and Lord Kinross.  The
Binstead cite appears to be a hapax that I don't know how to
interpret; the Kinross cite is a quote ("A bit ranchy, that") that
from the syntax hardly seems to be coming from the mouth of an
American, though the book in question (_Innocents at Home_, 1959)
deals with the U.S.  What the Oxford editor who wrote this entry had in mind
I can't imagine.

Pace Chapman it is extremely unlikely that Italian _rancio_ is the
source of _raunchy_.  The Italian word in the approximate sense
"rancid" is attested predominantly in the 16th century and seems to
be obsolete in Modern Italian, to judge by the cites in Battaglia,
_Grande dizionario della lingua italiana_.  Modern Italian has
_rancido_, but I don't see any persuasive reason to connect it with
_raunchy_--any more than I can see a persuasive reason to connect
_rancid_ to _raunchy_.  Nothing in the history of the word sketched
above suggests a connection with Italy or Italian-Americans.  Though
there are outcomes of Latin _rancidus_ in Italian dialects, they are
too distant phonetically to fall under consideration in any case.
Both Italian _rancido_ and English _rancid_ mean "having an offensive
smell or taste usually from chemical change or decompostion."  There
is only a loose semantic connection between this and _raunchy_,
which at least in early attestations, as we see above, means "sloppy"
or "performing in a sloppy manner," not "rancid."

Perhaps DARE and RHHDAS, when they reach R, will produce new data
that will suggest new etymological hypotheses.  For now, if pressed,
I would have to stick with "origin unknown."

Jim Rader

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 15 Apr 1998 18:13:02 -0500
From:    "Rakesh Bhatt (by way of Salikoko Mufwene  s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu )"
          rakesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU 
Subject: IAWE for Creolist and ADS

CALL FOR PAPERS

5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WORLD ENGLISHES
at the university of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

on

November 5-7, 1998


The main theme of this years conference is:  World Englishes and African
Identities. In addition to this theme, we invite abstracts of 20 minute
papers and 3 hr. colloquia on all aspects of World Englishes, including:

 African-American varieties of English/Ebonics
 Caribbean varieties of English
 Colloquia/Workshop on themes related to World Englishes
 Discourse Strategies
 English as a medium of literary creativity
 Evaluating and testing
 Impact/influence of English on the structures of indigenous languages
 Pedagogy involving English as an international language
 Power, ideology, and identity
 The bi-/multi-lingual creativity in English (including code-switching
 involving English)
 The politics of English in English-using countries.

One (1)-page abstracts on any of the above topics or combination thereof
are welcome.  The abstracts must include, on a separate 3 x 5 index card,
presenters full name, affiliation, mailing address, phone number, e-mail,
and fax-number (if available). Please submit seven (7) copies of the
abstract by JUNE 30, 1998, to:

Professor Eyamba G. Bokamba, Chair
5th IAWE Conference
Department of Linguistics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
707 South Mathews Av., 4088 FLB
Urbana, IL 61801
Tel: (217) 333-3563/244-3051
Email: deptling[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu

Program Committee:
Co-chairs:
        Rakesh M. Bhatt (University of South Carolina) E-mail:
        rakesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu
        Kimberly Brown (Portland State University) E-mail:
        kim[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nh1.nh.pdx.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 16 Apr 1998 10:25:02 +0900
From:    Gao Yongwei  951208[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FUDAN.EDU.CN 
Subject: Swallows & Amazons (for ever)

Dear all,

I have two questions:
1. What does the expression "swallows and amazons (for ever)" mean? I
came across the term in a COBUILD dictionary, but I failed to catch
its meaning. Can anyone help?
2. English is regarded as THE foreign language in China. It is used a ;pt
lot and learned by millions. Hence Chinglish arrived on the scene. The
catch-all phrase emcompasses misused expressions, wrong collocation and
Chinese English, etc. For instance, "...percent of state-run enterprises
are at a loss", which is culled from the first press interview of China's
new cabinet. Should "at a loss" be replaced by "losing money"? Is
"money-making" a better choice than "loss-making" in this context?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Yongwei Gao
Fudan University
Shanghai, China

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 15 Apr 1998 20:37:40 -0700
From:    "Johanna L. Wood"  joh.wood[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ASU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Swallows & Amazons (for ever)

  1. What does the expression "swallows and amazons (for ever)" mean? I
  came across the term in a COBUILD dictionary, but I failed to catch
  its meaning. Can anyone help?

"Swallows and Amazons" is the title of a 1930 children's book by Arthur
Ransome (1884-1967).  Two families, the Walkers (Swallows) and Blacketts
(Amazons) have adventures, the exact nature of which escape me now, but
boats are involved.  "Swallows and Amazons for ever" as I recall is a
sort of solidarity cry -- our families will endure -- though I haven't
heard it used outside the context of the book.
Johanna

Johanna L. Wood
Department of English
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 14 Apr 1998 to 15 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/15/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 13 Apr 1998 to 14 Apr 1998             98-04-15 00:00:00
There are 6 messages totalling 264 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Peace -  in any language
  2. cleaning your monitor screen (2)
  3. modern use of "gruntled" (2)
  4. 3rd Humor Studies Seminar

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 13 Apr 1998 23:07:38 -0500
From:    Mike Salovesh  t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Peace -  in any language

Ross Chambers wrote:
 
  One aspect of the Irish Peace agreement reached at Easter, summarised in
  the Irish Times, underlines the importance of matters of language.
 
  Regards - Ross Chambers
 
     The agreement yesterday between the British and Irish
  governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland
  aims to end almost 30 years of bitter civil and sectarian
  conflict and lay the foundations of peaceful coexistence
  between the two communities in Northern Ireland, and
  between the North and the South.
 
  The importance of respect for and tolerance of the Irish
  language, Ulster-Scots "and the languages of the various
  ethnic communities" is explicitly recognised. The British
  government is to take "resolute action" to promote the
  Irish language.  
 

As another piece of peace, did anyone else notice -- both in the above
quote and in what ex-Senator Mitchell and President Clinton have said on
TV -- how careful these sources are to avoid saying "the two sides", or
anything of that sort?  "Two sides" would be fighting words; "two
communities" strike me as words of peace.  They emphasize the common
humanity rather than the opposition.  That in itself is a great advance.

--  mike salovesh                                salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu 
    anthropology department
    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 14 Apr 1998 11:25:57 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: Re: cleaning your monitor screen

"A. Maberry"  maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU  writes:
      

I don't know about pet supplies, but from the description of the object, it
 sounds like what is usually called a "dry
sponge."
      

Yes, the instructions said that although you should clean the sponge itself with
 warm water, you should always use it
dry.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 14 Apr 1998 11:35:36 -0400
From:    Enid Pearsons  epearsons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RANDOMHOUSE.COM 
Subject: Re: cleaning your monitor screen

Is this marvelous cleaning device and sight saver recommended for
glass-covered CRT screens only, or will it work on the softer laptop
screens, which appear to be much more vulnerable to schmutz and
destruction?

))))))))) Previous Notes Mail
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
To:     ADS-L [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] UGA.CC.UGA.EDU
cc:     (bcc: Enid Pearsons/Trade/RandomHouse)
From:  Mark Mandel  Mark [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] DRAGONSYS.COM 
Date:  04/14/98 12:25 PM
Subject:  Re: cleaning your monitor screen




"A. Maberry"  maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU  writes:
      

I don't know about pet supplies, but from the description of the object, it
sounds like what is usually called a "dry
sponge."
      

Yes, the instructions said that although you should clean the sponge itself
with warm water, you should always use it
dry.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 14 Apr 1998 10:08:26 -0700
From:    "A. Vine"  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: modern use of "gruntled"

 From the Word du jour email dl:

gruntled (GRUN-tl'd) (adj.)

  -Definitions(s): 1. pleased; satisfied; contented (the opposite of
     *disgruntled*)

  -Samples:

        "An action against a barrister for negligence. . .
         would open the door to every disgrunted client.
         Now gruntled clients are rare in the criminal
         courts."
            --*New Statesman*, 11 Nov. 1966

        "The Agency has a nice file of gruntled exes
         who have found their talents in a great variety
         of jobs."
            --E. McGirr, *Hearse With Horses*, 1967

  -Side Dishes: Gruntled has a curious history.  *Gruntle* originally meant
     "to grunt" (from Middle English *gruntelen*); then through the late 16th
     century it was used to mean "to grumble or complain."  Thus, *gruntled*
     then would have meant essentially the same as our modern *disgruntled*,
     "to become discontented."  In 1938, however, P.G. Wodehouse revived the
     word and gave it a modern spin, deciding that it made a nice counterpart
     to *disgruntled*:

        "He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his
         voice, and I could see that, if not actually
         disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."
            --P.G. Wodehouse, *Code of Woosters*, 1938

Copyright 1998 Tim Bottorff

Can anyone confirm P.G. Wodehouse as the origin of the modern use of this term?

Andrea

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 14 Apr 1998 13:34:26 -0400
From:    Alan Baragona  baragonasa[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VAX.VMI.EDU 
Subject: Re: modern use of "gruntled"

At 10:08 AM 4/14/98 -0700, A. Vine wrote:
 From the Word du jour email dl:
 
 gruntled (GRUN-tl'd) (adj.)
 
   -Definitions(s): 1. pleased; satisfied; contented (the opposite of
      *disgruntled*)
 
snip
 
 Can anyone confirm P.G. Wodehouse as the origin of the modern use of this
 term?
 
 Andrea
 

OED2 online gives the Wodehouse as the earliest citation, and not another
one until the 1960's.  Here's the entry:

gruntled grA.nt'ld, ppl. a. [Back-formation f. disgruntled a.] Pleased,
satisfied, contented.

    1938 Wodehouse Code of Woosters i. 9 He spoke with a certain
    what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually
    disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

    1962 C. Rohan Delinquents 76 Come on, Brownie darling, be
    gruntled.

    1966 New Statesman 11 Nov. 693/2 An action against a barrister
    for negligence..would open the door to every disgruntled client.
    Now gruntled clients are rare in the criminal courts.

    1967 E. McGirr Hearse with Horses i. 17 The Agency has a nice
    file of gruntled exes who have found their talents in a great variety
    of jobs.

Alan B.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 14 Apr 1998 14:12:05 -0500
From:    Jeanelle Barrett  barrettj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OMNI.CC.PURDUE.EDU 
Subject: 3rd Humor Studies Seminar

****************************Please cross post******************

--
Seminar Announcement

The third International Humor Studies Seminar will be held at the
University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) from July 6 until July 18, 1998.
This year's Seminar features two one-week sessions: Humor Studies
(July 6-11) and Humor and Health (July 13-18).

The first session, Humor Studies, features The Interpretation of Humor:
A Socio-Cultural Approach, taught by Elliott Oring of California State
University at Los Angeles, and Humor and its Audience(s), taught by
Amy Carrell of the University of Central Oklahoma.

The second session, Humor and Health, features Overcoming the
Pinnochio Complex, taught by clinical psychologist Michael Titze of
Tuttlingen, Germany, and The Step Beyond Theory: Developing Skills to
Make Humor Relevant in Personal, Interpersonal, and Organizational
Settings, taught by clinical psychologist Waleed A. Salameh of San Diego,
California.

Classes will meet from 8:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. on weekdays and from
9:00 a.m. until noon on Saturday.

Academic credit at both the undergraduate and graduate levels is
available for each session students admissible to UCO.  Upon successful
completion of the Seminar, participants will receive a certificate of
endorsement from the Seminar Director and the International Society for
Humor Studies.

UCO is located in Edmond, OK, on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, and is
serviced by Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City.  UCO enrolls
approximately 15,500 students and is the third largest four-year institution
of higher education in the state.

The Seminar is endorsed by the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS).

For more information, please contact

Amy Carrell, Seminar Director
Department of English
University of Central Oklahoma
100 N. University Drive
Edmond, OK  73034-0184  USA
acarrell[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aix1.ucok.edu
(405) 341-2980, ext. 5609
fax: (405) 330-3823
http://www.libarts.ucok.edu/english/humor


--
Jeanelle Barrett                       barrettj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]omni.cc.purdue.edu
Editorial Assistant, HUMOR             (765) 494-3747
Department of English                  (765) 494-3780 fax
324 Heavilon Hall                      http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~barrettj
Purdue University
W. Lafayette, IN 47907-1356 USA

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 13 Apr 1998 to 14 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/14/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 12 Apr 1998 to 13 Apr 1998             98-04-14 00:02:23
There are 4 messages totalling 140 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Peace -  in any language
  2. cleaning your monitor screen (2)
  3. Cross-post: Linguists in media on Oakland Ebonics

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 13 Apr 1998 10:25:39 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: Peace -  in any language

One aspect of the Irish Peace agreement reached at Easter, summarised in
the Irish Times, underlines the importance of matters of language.

Regards - Ross Chambers

   The agreement yesterday between the British and Irish
governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland
aims to end almost 30 years of bitter civil and sectarian
conflict and lay the foundations of peaceful coexistence
between the two communities in Northern Ireland, and
between the North and the South.

The importance of respect for and tolerance of the Irish
language, Ulster-Scots "and the languages of the various
ethnic communities" is explicitly recognised. The British
government is to take "resolute action" to promote the
Irish language.  

--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 13 Apr 1998 14:30:11 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: Re: cleaning your monitor screen

Bob Haas  rahaas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UNCG.EDU  asked:
      

What is the name of this wonder product?  Always looking for new computer
 clutter.
      

Sorry, I don't remember the trade name, and I threw the wrapper away long ago.
 Look in a pet supply store for a blocky
sponge, about 6" x 3" x 1.5" (in the US; about 15cm x 7 x 4 in the civilized
 world), sold for picking up pet hair, but also
recommended for this use.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:45:38 -0700
From:    "A. Maberry"  maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU 
Subject: Re: cleaning your monitor screen

I don't know about pet supplies, but from the description of the object,
it sounds like what is usually called a "dry sponge." We got ours at a
janitorial/cleaning supply company. I don't believe that it actually had
a brand name. It does work well for picking up cat hair--never tried it on
the monitor.

Allen
maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu

On Mon, 13 Apr 1998, Mark Mandel wrote:

  Bob Haas  rahaas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UNCG.EDU  asked:
        
 
  What is the name of this wonder product?  Always looking for new computer
 clutter.
        
 
  Sorry, I don't remember the trade name, and I threw the wrapper away long ago.
 Look in a pet supply store for a blocky
  sponge, about 6" x 3" x 1.5" (in the US; about 15cm x 7 x 4 in the civilized
 world), sold for picking up pet hair, but also
  recommended for this use.
 
         Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
      Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
   320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
             Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
 

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 13 Apr 1998 16:34:15 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: Cross-post: Linguists in media on Oakland Ebonics

        resolution

           The following appeared in LINGUIST List #9.556
                    Please do NOT reply to me.
    Please  direct any responses directly to the questioner
                at the address given in the post.
           --------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 12:28:01 -0700
From: Nancy Seidler  nseidler[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]miis.edu 
Subject: Linguists in the media on Oakland School Board's Ebonics resolution

I am presently researching how the print media used linguist's
expertise in their coverage of the Oakland School Board's Ebonics
resolution.

        As part of this research I am collecting information from
linguists who sent letters to the editor of any newspapers.

        If you sent a letter to the editor, I'd appreciate your
sending me an e-mail with the following information:

1. the name of the newspaper
2. whether or not it was published.

        Additionally, if you still have the letter and would be
willing to send it to me, I would appreciate that as well.

Professor Lynn Goldstein
lgoldstein[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]miis.edu
The Monterey Institute of International Studies
425 Van Buren St.
Monterey, CA 93950

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 12 Apr 1998 to 13 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/13/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 10 Apr 1998 to 12 Apr 1998             98-04-13 00:01:09
There are 2 messages totalling 39 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1998 to 10 Apr 1998 (2)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:30:59 +0900
From:    Gao Yongwei  951208[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FUDAN.EDU.CN 
Subject: Re: ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1998 to 10 Apr 1998

Dear all,

Is New York also known as Big Bagel? What's the origin? Thanks.

Yongwei Gao
Fudan University,
Shanghai, China

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 12 Apr 1998 20:18:03 -0700
From:    Bill King  wfking[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GOTNET.NET 
Subject: Re: ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1998 to 10 Apr 1998

Yongwei Gao
Fudan University,
Shanghai, China       asked
Is New York also known as Big Bagel? What's the origin? Thanks.

The substitution of bagel for apple in "the Big Apple" is a joke based
on NYC having a huge Jewish population.  The bagel, a boiled risen
circular breadstuff looking like a big doughnut, is Jewish (even if
baked, frozen, and sold with cafe latte in Phoenix).  NY City has the
largest Jewish population of any city in the world, I think, unless I'm
just one messhuggah ex-non-native New Yorker.

Bill King      Elk Grove, CA

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 10 Apr 1998 to 12 Apr 1998
************************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/11/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1998 to 10 Apr 1998              98-04-11 00:00:49
There are 8 messages totalling 254 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. flat
  2. Impactful (3)
  3. impactful (2)
  4. English plurals poem
  5. cleaning your monitor screen

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 08:32:43 EDT
From:    CLAndrus  CLAndrus[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Re: flat

I grew up in Manatee County Florida. People were flat-out nuts, flat-out
crazy. Very common expression.

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 09:38:18 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Impactful

Before I throw away this week's TV Guide, I wanted to note a word on p. 35.
In a discussion of Agnes Nixon, the famous soap-opera scriptwriter, Susan
Lucci the famous soap-opera actress is quoted as saying: "Agnes was
dramatizing socially impactful stories before anyone else had the coureage
or imagination to do it." I checked several recent dictionaries and a couple
of recent books on neologisms I happened to have around, and I didn't see
"impactful." I know that *I* haven't seen it before; I'd have remembered it....

I imagine "impactful" grows naturally out of the ongoing tendency to expand
the conveniently intense but vague word "impact," first from a noun to a
verb, and then to an adjective. But is this a hapax/nonce-word, or do others
out there have citations for it, or recollections of having heard it? (And
could "impactfully" and "unimpactful" be far behind?)

(See, I'm still thinking about the boundaries between nonce-usage,
neologism, empirically attested but stigmatized usage, and performance
error....)

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 09:41:11 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Re: Impactful

At 09:38 AM 4/10/98 -0400, I wrote:
 Before I throw away this week's TV Guide, I wanted to note a word on p. 35....

To be clear -- it's the April 4 - 10 1998 issue of TV Guide.

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 11:13:56 +0000
From:    Jim Rader  jrader[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]M-W.COM 
Subject: Re: impactful

There is an entry for _impactful_ in W3; our first cite for the word
is from Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites, _Movies: A
Psychological Study_ (The Free Press, 1950), p. 22:

We might suppose that some of the most impactful heroines of current
films would combine these two functions:  that of the good-bad girl
who appears attractive through her seeming relations with other men,
and that of the girl who takes the initiative towards men,
demonstrating a masculine approach, and not making too many demands
on the man.

The next cite, which I won't bother to reproduce, is from a J.D.
Salinger story published in _The New Yorker_ (May 4, 1957, pp.
40-41).

Our cite files do not have a whole lot of evidence for the word,
which may explain its absence from the Collegiates, even as a run-on
entry.  It should be in, though.  There is massive evidence for
_impactful_ on Nexis, which I tabulate as follows:

before 1985:  31 cites (earliest, _Forbes_, Aug. 15, 1975, p. 15)
1985-89:  149 cites
1990-93:  299 cites
1994-95:  312 cites
1996-97:  430 cites
1998:  56 cites

In evaluating this, one should keep in mind the great expansion in
the number of publications on Nexis over the last eight or so years.
As for derivatives, Nexis turned up the following:

impactfully - 16 cites (earliest 1985)
impactfulness - 3 cites
unimpactful - 1 cite (1993)
non-impactful and nonimpactful - 3 cites

Much of the evidence for _impactful_ is from business, advertising,
and marketing publications, though it is far from exclusive to these.
Whatever one thinks of it, _impactful_ is well-embedded in American
English.

Jim Rader

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 08:08:14 -0700
From:    Peter Richardson  prichard[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LINFIELD.EDU 
Subject: Re: Impactful

Sounds like this word is headed for a future of utter impactlessness.

PR

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 11:58:30 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Re: impactful

At 11:13 AM 4/10/98 +0000, Jim Rader jrader[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]m-w.com wrote:
 There is an entry for _impactful_ in W3; our first cite for the word
 is from Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites, _Movies: A
 Psychological Study_ (The Free Press, 1950)

Yes, I don't have W3 with me here -- and obviously I've been indulging in a
limited array of reading material all these years, since I haven't bumped
into "impactful" anywhere before.

I imagine that when items like impact-and-derivatives come to be seen as
trendy in some areas in the culture, other *rival* areas of the culture tend
to assert their independence by embargoing or stigmatizing them. The fact
that some areas of the culture refuse to use "impact" as a verb (let alone
the less common derivatives from "impact") makes it possible to read pretty
heavily in (e.g.) cultural journalism or academic writing in the humanities
and never encounter them anywhere.

Thanks for all the citations you provided (and thanks also to a couple of
folks who replied offlist).


 Much of the evidence for _impactful_ is from business, advertising,
 and marketing publications...
 

which authors and editors in the areas mentioned just above tend to look
down on, in general as well as in terms of linguistic usage....

 Whatever one thinks of it, _impactful_ is well-embedded in American
 English.
 

Am I getting the correct impression, that all or almost all the citations
are from US usage? Is this cluster of impact-derived words encountering
resistance in Commonwealth countries? Or is it that are they just being
innovated in US English, and spreading over time to other anglophone countries?

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 12:55:03 -0700
From:    "A. Vine"  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: English plurals poem

This is from the following site, which I highly recommend.  It has what is
 probably the
more accurate version of "The Chaos" by G. Nolst Trenite, AKA "Charivarius",
 which is the
English pronunciation poem:

http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/english.html


(If you know who the author is, please drop me a line)

We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes;
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
When couldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot - would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
If the singular is this and plural is these,
Why shouldn't the plural of kiss be nicknamed kese?
Then one may be that, and three may be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose;
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim!
So our English, I think you will all agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there.
And dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose --
Just look them up -- and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I'd learned to talk it when I was five,
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five!

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 10 Apr 1998 16:50:21 -0400
From:    Bob Haas  rahaas[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UNCG.EDU 
Subject: Re: cleaning your monitor screen

What is the name of this wonder product?  Always looking for new computer
 clutter.

Mark Mandel wrote:

  I bought a kind of sponge that is marketed mainly for picking up pet hair (as
 in, our guinea pigs & gerbils), but says
  something like "also good for cleaning monitor screens". It works great! I
 keep one in my desk drawer at work and one
  on my desk at home, where it does double duty as a wrist cushion for my mouse.
 No liquids to spill, either.
 
         Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
      Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
   320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
             Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 9 Apr 1998 to 10 Apr 1998
***********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/10/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 8 Apr 1998 to 9 Apr 1998               98-04-10 00:00:24
There are 18 messages totalling 475 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. more on non-negative "un" (9)
  2. Freshman composition - again
  3. expansion of "outed"
  4. questionnaire
  5. (In)flammable
  6. flat (2)
  7. RHDAS Vol. 1
  8. "flat" and "flat out"
  9. A whole nother thing

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 8 Apr 1998 23:02:44 -0700
From:    Kim & Rima McKinzey  rkm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SLIP.NET 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

 Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPIX.NET  writes:
     
 
 Not exactly the same, but close -  "hot water heater" for what is in fact
 a cold water heater.
     
I've often wondered about "cow crossing" - and why isn't it "cow not-crossing"?

Rima

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 02:38:03 -0000
From:    Gareth Branwyn  garethb2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EARTHLINK.NET 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

If you have sent this message to me on AOL, please note that I have a new
email address. It's:

garethb2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]earthlink.net

Please send all future correspondence there and edit your address book.

Thanks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gareth Branwyn
The Big Cheese
Street Tech Labs
"We have a website and we're not afraid to use it!"

Web: http://www.streettech.com/
Email: garethb2[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]earthlink.net

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 09:23:52 EDT
From:    AAllan  AAllan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Freshman composition - again

Andrea writes :

  The writing training I received in high school and college never really gave
me anything
concrete to work with. . . .  The grading of these papers may have provided
some instruction, but it was
haphazard.  To make a programming analogy, it would be like writing a program
based on an
incomplete specification, then having the user test it and tell you piece by
piece what
was wrong. . . .

Maybe it would be useful to some students to learn how to write outside the
context of
literary criticism.  

  I agree with her view of the usual kind of writing instruction.
  I and my department do something different. It's procedural, explicit, and
generally applicable. You'll find it in (ahem):
_Essentials of Writing to the Point_ by Allan A. Metcalf. Harcourt Brace 1995.
ISBN 0-15-501709-8.

- Allan Metcalf

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 08:39:19 EST
From:    simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: expansion of "outed"

This may be old news, but I heard this for the first time last night.

On Peter Jennings' news, he read/said that another Nazi war criminal
"has been outed" by which he meant outed as a Nazi war criminal.

beth simon

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 10:43:27 +0000
From:    David Bergdahl  bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: questionnaire

I went to the Cayman Is. over break and completely forgot abt giving
out your questionnaire until I stumbled across it in a pile of
printouts yesterday.  Sorry! Will get it to you asap.
--
 _____________________________________________________________________
david.bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ohiou.edu                Ohio University / Athens
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl         Ellis Hall 114c
tel: (740) 593-2783                     Office hours:
fax: (740) 593-2818                         MTThF 10:10-11 a.m.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 10:17:11 -0500
From:    Greg Pulliam  gpulliam[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CHARLIE.IIT.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

Last night on CNN, a Hollywood reporter twice (within a few seconds)
referred to singer George Michael as having been caught in an
"uncompromising" position (or situation--don't remember which) when the LA
cops arrested him in a park restroom yesterday.

Greg

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 11:46:14 -0400
From:    Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPIX.NET 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

At 10:17 AM 09-04-98 -0500, you wrote:
 Last night on CNN, a Hollywood reporter twice (within a few seconds)
 referred to singer George Michael as having been caught in an
 "uncompromising" position

It's possible he was. I'd rather not know.


Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]epix.net
http://www.epix.net/~dcamp/

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 11:58:33 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

At 10:17 AM -0500 4/9/98, Greg Pulliam wrote:
 Last night on CNN, a Hollywood reporter twice (within a few seconds)
 referred to singer George Michael as having been caught in an
 "uncompromising" position (or situation--don't remember which) when the LA
 cops arrested him in a park restroom yesterday.
 
 Greg

Maybe they meant "an uncomfortable position".  Inter alia, those park
restroom stalls are pretty narrow.

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 11:07:28 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: (In)flammable

Not "un" but "in", and related?
Somewhere (Australia?) a conscious policy to delete the 'in' from
'inflammable' was made.It was felt that those speaking English as a
second language would perceive dangerous goods marked in this way as not
flammable.
Is this an example of successful prescription?

Regards - Ross Chambers
--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 13:20:13 EDT
From:    CLAndrus  CLAndrus[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

CNN reporters frequently invent terms. Ex: last night: We are efforting to get
the details on that. I am efforting to understand that.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 14:15:10 -0400
From:    Gregory {Greg} Downing  downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

At 10:17 AM 4/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
 Last night on CNN, a Hollywood reporter twice (within a few seconds)
 referred to singer George Michael as having been caught in an
 "uncompromising" position (or situation--don't remember which) when the LA
 cops arrested him in a park restroom yesterday.
 

So, a general question: How does one draw the boundary between (so to speak)
"common performative error" and "empirically observed, descriptivistically
existent linguistic mode"? It would seem paradoxical to say that "common
performative error" is a null set....

Pardon the philosophical issue....

Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 11:50:43 -0700
From:    Peter Richardson  prichard[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LINFIELD.EDU 
Subject: flat

This morning on NPR there was an interview with a survivor of that
horrible tornado that killed so many in Alabama. Her statement included:
"...a lotta people who are gonna flat need prayer..."

I'm wondering about the distribution of _flat_ as an intensifier, since it
appears not to be in DARE. The RHHDAS lists it as an adverb, as in "I'm
flat broke"--something I heard growing up in Illinois. But this
intensifying function seems rarer. Any ideas?

Peter

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 15:03:51 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

At 2:15 PM -0400 4/9/98, Gregory {Greg} Downing wrote:
 At 10:17 AM 4/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
  Last night on CNN, a Hollywood reporter twice (within a few seconds)
  referred to singer George Michael as having been caught in an
  "uncompromising" position (or situation--don't remember which) when the LA
  cops arrested him in a park restroom yesterday.
  
 
 So, a general question: How does one draw the boundary between (so to speak)
 "common performative error" and "empirically observed, descriptivistically
 existent linguistic mode"? It would seem paradoxical to say that "common
 performative error" is a null set....
 
 Pardon the philosophical issue....
 
No easy answer, since it's a matter of degree, but that's why the category
of nonceness (as in "nonce reanalysis") comes in handy, even if it begs the
question.  One person saying "that's a whole nother thing", or
"uncompromising position", or asking "what's a poy?" [in response to the
claim that Aunt Jane has a lot of poise] may be doing a nonce reanalysis,
but many people saying "that's a whole nother thing", or speaking of newts
and aprons and umpires instead of ewts and naprons and numpires, or
treating "pea" as a back-formed singular from reanalyzed "pease" is no
longer performance error.  And then (as possibly with 'nother', and
certainly with e.g. 'monokini' for topless bathing-suit in the '60's), we
have not performance error but performance of linguistic games, the best
current example being this essay, which may well have been posted on the
list but is worth redredging from time to time at these moments...

===========================
                          How I met my wife
                            by Jack Winter
               Published 25 July 1994 in the New Yorker

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very
chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.

I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her
standing alone in a corner.  She was a descript person, a woman in a
state of total array.  Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and
she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones
about it since I was travelling cognito.  Beknownst to me, the
hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so
it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened.  And even
though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be
peccable.  Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.

Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause
was evitable.  There were two ways about it, but the chances that
someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata
or a sung hero were slim.  I was, after all, something to sneeze at,
someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused
bridled passion.

So I decided not to risk it.  But then, all at once, for some apparent
reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could
make heads and tails of.

I was plussed.  It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and
it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen.
Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt
capacitated---as if this were something I was great shakes at---and
forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number
of times.  So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall
and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.

Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to
prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous.  Wanting to make only
called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying
to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a
few myths about myself.

She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory
character who was up to some good.  She told me who she was.  "What a
perfect nomer," I said, advertently.  The conversation became more and
more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail.  But I was
defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour.  I asked if she wanted
to come with me.  To my delight, she was committal.  We left the party
together and have been together ever since.  I have given her my
love, and she has requited it.

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 15:20:01 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: flat

At 11:50 AM -0700 4/9/98, Peter Richardson wrote:
 This morning on NPR there was an interview with a survivor of that
 horrible tornado that killed so many in Alabama. Her statement included:
 "...a lotta people who are gonna flat need prayer..."
 
 I'm wondering about the distribution of _flat_ as an intensifier, since it
 appears not to be in DARE. The RHHDAS lists it as an adverb, as in "I'm
 flat broke"--something I heard growing up in Illinois. But this
 intensifying function seems rarer. Any ideas?
 
 Peter

There's also the related (I assume) "flat-out".  I've heard "he can flat
out play", "he flat-out blew the call", and "he's a flat-out superstar", or
their equivalents in sportscasterese, and I'm sure it would turn up all
over the place on Nexis.  The first "flat" above does sound like a
regionalism to me, though.  (And I wonder about the
distribution--collocational, not geographic--of the intensifying "flat" of
"flat broke".  I can imagine "flat-out brilliant", but not "flat
brilliant", in my own idiolect.)  The OED does have "flat broke" as a
specific Americanism dating back at least to Bartlett's 1859 Dictionary,
but then it also has the interesting 1601 cite "I am flat of your mind"
under the heading of adverbial FLAT = 'absolutely, downright, fully'.  And
then there's the related postposed "flat" = 'exactly' (three minutes flat)
or 'completely' (turned me down flat).   They all seem to suggest something
like 'no two ways about it.'

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 15:50:40 -0500
From:    Grant Barrett  gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DFJP.COM 
Subject: RHDAS Vol. 1

Just wanted to let folks know that this weekend I picked up the first volume of
 the Random House Dictionary of American Slang for $16, brand-new, from the
 Strand at Broadway and 12th St. here in Manhattan. Considering that volume two
 sells there for $60, I think this is a bargain.

There were a bunch more copies of volume one, if you're interested. Call them at
 212 473 1452 for more information.

I also, finally, found the 1977 printing of Mencken's American Language with the
 two supplemental volumes, as a set for $30. It was a big weekend.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 14:16:01 MDT
From:    "//www.usa.net/~ague"  ague[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]REDRCK.ENET.DEC.COM 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

This must have been written by someone from one of the 48 states of Linois
and Diana.

-- Jim
 clip 

                          How I met my wife
                            by Jack Winter
               Published 25 July 1994 in the New Yorker

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very
chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.

I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her
standing alone in a corner.  She was a descript person, a woman in a
state of total array.  Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and
she moved in a gainly way.

 clip 

(Linois: any state in the US but Illinois.)

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 14:30:23 -0500
From:    Gerald Cohen  gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UMR.EDU 
Subject: Re: "flat" and "flat out"

   Peter Richardson and Larry Horn treated adverbial "flat" and "flat out"
in messages today (April 9), e.g. "...a lotta people who are gonna flat
need prayer."  I have a bibliographical reference on this topic:

    Gerald  Cohen, 1988. "_Flat_, _flat out_ 'simply'",  in: _Etymology and
Linguistic Principles_, vol. 1 (_Pursuit of Linguistic Insight_), edited
and published by Gerald Leonard Cohen, University of Missouri-Rolla,
pp.95-96.

    Here now are a few more examples I have collected for adverbial "flat":

1) "They flat hate each other."  -- (TV football announcer in reference to
two teams)

2) "As A Youth Cesar Cedeno Could Flat Play" --(_St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ ,
Sept. 1, 1985, Sec. D, p.1/1).

3) "They were just flat left alone." -- (in reference to a university
department that would receive no faculty cuts)

--Gerald Cohen



gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]umr.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 9 Apr 1998 17:50:18 -0400
From:    Wendi Nichols  wnichols[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RANDOMHOUSE.COM 
Subject: A whole nother thing

New to this list - couldn't resist this one.  I grew up saying "a whole
nother X" - family background is Midwest via Montana to Seattle.  My
grandfather who is 92 says it, so it had to have been widespread for quite
a while.  Anyone have the history?

Wendalyn Nichols
Editorial Director
Random House Dictionaries

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 8 Apr 1998 to 9 Apr 1998
**********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/9/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 7 Apr 1998 to 8 Apr 1998               98-04-09 00:01:34
There are 3 messages totalling 126 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. more on non-negative "un" (2)
  2. freshman composition--again

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 8 Apr 1998 11:12:17 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPIX.NET  writes:
    

Not exactly the same, but close -  "hot water heater" for what is in fact a cold
 water heater.
    

It's a heater, whose purpose is to provide hot water, as a tea( )kettle's
 purpose is to provide (the necessary hot water
for) tea. Both are named for the goal, not the raw material.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 8 Apr 1998 13:44:25 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

At 11:12 AM -0500 4/8/98, Mark Mandel wrote:
 Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPIX.NET  writes:
     
 
 Not exactly the same, but close -  "hot water heater" for what is in fact
 a cold
     
 
 It's a heater, whose purpose is to provide hot water, as a tea( )kettle's
 purpos
 for) tea. Both are named for the goal, not the raw material.
 

Or, alternatively, a hot water heater does indeed heat cold water but it
also heats water hot.

Larry

------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 8 Apr 1998 13:58:57 -0700
From:    "A. Vine"  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: Re: freshman composition--again

Devon Coles wrote:
 
  Further to Peter Richardson's comments:
 
  As it was in the beginning, is now, and likely ever shall be, I am a
  student. I happen to write (mostly) A papers, and cringe when I see courses
  that evaluate solely by quizzes and exams. Generally, I avoid them like the
  plague.

As someone who has the opposite viewpoint, i.e. quizzes and problem sets are
 ideal,
writing is too fuzzy and so to be avoided, I think it might be useful to share
 my
perspective.

The writing training I received in high school and college never really gave me
 anything
concrete to work with.  Many of the books I was required to read were not
 interesting to
me at all.  Having to write about these uninteresting, sometimes repulsive books
 was
decidedly uninspiring (for me, _The Red Pony_ and _Pentimento_ spring to mind as
 2
examples).  The grading of these papers may have provided some instruction, but
 it was
haphazard.  To make a programming analogy, it would be like writing a program
 based on an
incomplete specification, then having the user test it and tell you piece by
 piece what
was wrong.  This lengthens the time it would take to come to the same end as
 that if the
spec were well written in the first place.  In addition, I found I have no
 natural
aptitude for reading between the lines, nor was it interesting to me to learn
 this skill.
This is not to say I don't enjoy reading and using my imagination to fill in the
 gaps of
the story.  What I am saying is, I don't enjoy trying to determine what the
 writer was
saying which wasn't actually written.  And I don't think I'm alone in this
 regard.  Still,
I needed to learn how to write.

In my junior year of college, I asked my roommate (who was an English major and
 made A's)
what is required for a literary critique.  She gave me a few rules; these were
 the first
concrete descriptions I ever had heard.  I've never had to use them, because
 after 1st
semester freshman year I vowed never to take another English class.  I write all
 the time;
I just don't write literary critiques.  Instead, I write technical papers
 describing
programming procedures, and memos discussing business issues and schedules.  In
 this
context, I would say Devon Coles rules are particularly poignant; I don't really
 know
about the world of literary criticism.

Maybe it would be useful to some students to learn how to write outside the
 context of
literary criticism.  I think learning how to write procedural descriptions would
 be
incredibly useful to students once they get out into the business world.  It may
 also help
them to focus on the points they are writing about.  From there, if they so
 desire, they
can take those skills to the more complex world of literary criticism.

Andrea
Software internationalization
Sun Microsystems
avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]eng.sun.com

P.S.  To repeat the words of my freshman year roommate (in the History of Arts
 and Letters
program at Yale) upon receiving a B on her paper, "I don't appreciate her [the
 prof]
telling me that I'm a B thinker."


  I believe the reason many students don't write excellent papers is that they
  have never been taught an essential aspect of the process.
  I see an essay as my turn in the conversation. I have been granted the
  floor. Along with the privilege of speaking, I am charged with the
  responsibility of not wasting everyone else's time. I am expected to speak
  on topic, and not simply repeat what the previous speaker has already
  addressed. If I disagree with what has been said I am expected, first, to
  demonstrate that I understand clearly what has been said, secondly, not to
  misrepresent the previous speaker's ideas, and thirdly,  to make clear my
  reasons for taking exception. I am expected to speak in a register
  appropriate to the conversation and to contribute something worthy of
  mention. Sadly, I am yet to hear any MA teaching assistant, doctoral
  candidate, PhD or tenured professor address this essay writing in these
  terms. Pity.
 
  Devon Coles
  dcoles[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]horizon.bc.ca

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 7 Apr 1998 to 8 Apr 1998
**********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/8/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 6 Apr 1998 to 7 Apr 1998               98-04-08 00:01:30
There are 9 messages totalling 323 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. FWD Help if you can ?
  2. Humanities on the Hill (Washington DC May 6-7)
  3. Raunchy
  4. more on non-negative "un" (6)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 09:15:31 -0500
From:    Grant Barrett  gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DFJP.COM 
Subject: FWD Help if you can ?

         FWD Help if you can ?                                 98-04-07
 02:14:11
The message below was sent to me, probably from a link on the ADS web site. I
 cannot help the sender, but if anyone can, please respond to her directly.

From: Clark, Ashley Reynolds
I am a native of the Boston area and I am currently a student at Roanoke
College in Salem, VA.  I am am English major writing a paper on Boston
Dialects. Needless to say the area does not have an abundece of booksor
resorces on the subject to help me.  Any articles or information you have
would be a great help.

                        Sincerely,
                                Ashley Clark
                                aclark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]roanoke.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 11:50:56 EDT
From:    AAllan  AAllan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
Subject: Humanities on the Hill (Washington DC May 6-7)

If you'd like to present the case for the humanities to members of Congress,
there's an opportunity Wednesday and Thursday, May 6-7.

It's the annual "Humanities on the Hill," an "event in which humanities
community members gather in Washington to raise the profile of the National
Endowment for the Humanities - and the humanities in general - before
Congress," says our Washington affiliate the National Humanities Alliance.

It begins with a briefing 3-5 pm Wednesday, then a reception for Sidney Yates
6-7:30 pm Wednesday; an event for members of Congress 8:30-10 am Thursday, and
individual visits Thursday afternoon.

ADS does not have a budget to support our participation in this event. But if
you're interested and might be able to figure out how to get there, please let
me know.

- Allan Metcalf

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 13:22:27 -0400
From:    Elizabeth Gibbens  gibbens[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EROLS.COM 
Subject: Raunchy

Dear All--

        Although the _RH Webster's College Dictionary_ (1995) and the _American
Heritage Dictionary_ (unabridged version, 1992) say that the word "raunchy"
is of uncertain origin, there is agreement on the time at which the word
became popular, and there is one argument about its etymology.

        Both Flexner-Wentworth (1975) and Robert Chapman (1986) say that
 "raunchy"
became a popular word during World War II (both cite the same article in
_Forum_ by R.G. Hubler).  Chapman says that the word probably derives from
the Italian _rancio_, meaning "rancid, stale, rank."

        Does anyone have a fresh or a different take?  If so, I'd appreciate
hearing it (or, to be more accurate, viewing it).  Thank you.

                                                        Elizabeth Gibbens

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 13:38:39 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: more on non-negative "un"

I found this in the "Selling It" section of the March, 1995 issue of _Consumer
Reports_ while clearing out (p. 211 = inside back cover):

 ===============

 Oh. So you'll refreeze our pipes?
 ---------------------------------

Perhaps Brown's Certified Welding should have thawed out this wording a little
more.

(Photo of ad evidently clipped from newspaper):

            BROWN'S
        CERTIFIED WELDING

     PORTABLE WELDING EQUIPMENT
   PIPE - HEAVY EQUIPMENT - STEEL WORK
 REASONABLE RATES, RUTLAND AREA COVERED!!

 PIPE UNTHAWING   ----[largest lettering in the whole ad]

 ===================

Presumably this was meant, but not read, as the same non-negative
"un-" as in "unravel", "unloose", and "unpeel", with the sense of
'release, un[either sense!]bind'.

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 14:14:57 -0600
From:    charles fritz juengling  cjuengling[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]STCLOUDSTATE.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

  PIPE UNTHAWING   ----[largest lettering in the whole ad]
 

This reminds me of 'unloosen' meaning 'untie', as in 'unloosen your shoes
before you take them off.'

Fritz Juengling
Foreign Languages and Literature Department
St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, Minnesota

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 12:20:04 -0700
From:    "A. Maberry"  maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

For what little it's worth I grew up with "unloosen your shoes."(But,
"loosen that rope there.")

Allen
maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu



On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, charles fritz juengling wrote:

    PIPE UNTHAWING   ----[largest lettering in the whole ad]
   
 
  This reminds me of 'unloosen' meaning 'untie', as in 'unloosen your shoes
  before you take them off.'
 
  Fritz Juengling
  Foreign Languages and Literature Department
  St. Cloud State University
  St. Cloud, Minnesota
 

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 15:42:18 -0400
From:    Larry Horn  laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

At 1:38 PM -0500 4/7/98, Mark Mandel wrote:
 I found this in the "Selling It" section of the March, 1995 issue of _Consumer
 Reports_ while clearing out (p. 211 = inside back cover):
 
  ===============
 
  Oh. So you'll refreeze our pipes?
  ---------------------------------
 
 Perhaps Brown's Certified Welding should have thawed out this wording a little
 more.
 
 (Photo of ad evidently clipped from newspaper):
 
             BROWN'S
         CERTIFIED WELDING
 
      PORTABLE WELDING EQUIPMENT
    PIPE - HEAVY EQUIPMENT - STEEL WORK
  REASONABLE RATES, RUTLAND AREA COVERED!!
 
  PIPE UNTHAWING   ----[largest lettering in the whole ad]
 
  ===================
 
 Presumably this was meant, but not read, as the same non-negative
 "un-" as in "unravel", "unloose", and "unpeel", with the sense of
 'release, un[either sense!]bind'.
 

Not just presumably; this is a fairly well-attested sense; the OED
citations date back four centuries, and the meaning is always the redundant
one, in which UNTHAW = 'thaw' or 'unfreeze'.  I discussed this in a paper
on un-verbs ten years ago, from which I can provide this excerpt for anyone
curious about why "unthaw" is a synonym of "thaw", while "unfreeze" is an
antonym of "freeze", which I originally presented in the course of a
general analysis in which all un-verbs basically involve "helping entropy
along", returning their theme arguments to their original or unmarked
state.  (Hope no Dutch readers take offense.)

-----------------
Why is it that while "unthaw", which looks like an antonym of "thaw"  or
"unfreeze", is in fact their synonym, while "unmelt", which looks like it
ought to mean whatever unthaw means, in fact does not occur at all?  In OED
citations dating back four centuries, including those in (16),

(16)    The ponds were almost unthawed.
        The men [in Holland] are cold to such a degree that neither Love nor
                wine can unthaw them.

"unthaw"  is invariably equivalent simply to "thaw".  Of course, "unfreeze"
too always equates to "thaw".  This conforms to our hypothesis, assuming
that the natural state of H2O is liquid, that is, water.  Hence, freezing
can be un-done, restoring the state of nature, while thawing--which itself
creates a natural state--cannot.  The systematic character of this
asymmetry is reinforced by the existence of dialectal forms eave and
uneave, both glossed as 'thaw' (Wright 1961)...

[Discussion of relation of unV to 'V out' as opposed to 'V up' omitted.]

Predictably, neither "unfill"  nor "unempty"  occurs freely, each being
normally pre-empted by its underived synonym (cf. Clark & Clark 1979).  But
the former does occasionally surface unblocked as the entropic antonym of
"fill", while the latter, typically in the dialectal version "unempt",
occupies that same semantic slot, duplicating its unprefixed entropic
counterpart.  To "unfill"  or "unempt(y)" a bowl or a lake is to empty it.
And of course we fill UP a bowl of water but empty it OUT.  We are now
prepared to recognize that it is no accident that a lake freezes up, but
thaws out.
        So much for thawing and freezing.  Now what of the missing
"unmelt"?  If melting is akin to thawing, the transmutation from a solid
(or frozen) to a liquid (or unfrozen) state, why don't we have redundant
"unmelt"  alongside "unthaw"?  The answer is that  melting is in fact
crucially unlike thawing:  while a thawed object, say a turkey, is a
temporarily frozen theme or patient which returns to its unmarked state,
retaining its physical integrity, the integrity of a melted theme or
patient may be affected or even destroyed by the change of state.  A thawed
turkey is still a turkey (indeed, a turkey par excellence), a thawed lake
still a lake, but a melted ice cube, snowman, or wicked witch is not simply
a different form of the same object, but essentially a puddle of one kind
or another.  Notice too that where things freeze up and thaw out, they melt
away.  If I come to your door complaining that I'm frozen stiff, my
reaction might differ considerably depending on whether you offered me a
brandy to help me thaw out or a potion to help me melt away.
------------------------
(If you want more, the article is "Morphology, Pragmatics, and the
Un-Verb", and it's in ESCOL '88, pp. 210-33.)

Larry

P.S.  The last word on these redundant un-verbs from a card-carrying
prescriptivist (to be read while banging dictionary loudly on the lectern):

The verb "to unloose" should analogically signify "to tie", in like manner as
"to untie" signifies "to loose".  To what purpose is it, then, to retain a
term, without any necessity, in a signification the reverse of that to
which its etymology manifestly suggests?...All considerations of analogy,
propriety, perspicuity, unite in persuading us to repudiate this
preposterous application altogether.
   (George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776--
        thanks to Dennis Baron for the citation!)

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 13:04:23 -0700
From:    "A. Vine"  avine[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ENG.SUN.COM 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

Larry Horn wrote:
 
          So much for thawing and freezing.  Now what of the missing
  "unmelt"?  If melting is akin to thawing, the transmutation from a solid
  (or frozen) to a liquid (or unfrozen) state, why don't we have redundant
  "unmelt"  alongside "unthaw"?  The answer is that  melting is in fact
  crucially unlike thawing:  while a thawed object, say a turkey, is a
  temporarily frozen theme or patient which returns to its unmarked state,
  retaining its physical integrity, the integrity of a melted theme or
  patient may be affected or even destroyed by the change of state.  A thawed
  turkey is still a turkey (indeed, a turkey par excellence), a thawed lake
  still a lake, but a melted ice cube, snowman, or wicked witch is not simply
  a different form of the same object, but essentially a puddle of one kind
  or another.  Notice too that where things freeze up and thaw out, they melt
  away.  If I come to your door complaining that I'm frozen stiff, my
  reaction might differ considerably depending on whether you offered me a
  brandy to help me thaw out or a potion to help me melt away.

I wouldn't completely discount "melt down".

Andrea
Software internationalization
Sun Microsystems

--
--------------------
bite the wax tadpole

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 7 Apr 1998 17:01:41 -0400
From:    Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EPIX.NET 
Subject: Re: more on non-negative "un"

Not exactly the same, but close -  "hot water heater" for what is in fact a
cold water heater.


Duane Campbell  dcamp[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]epix.net
http://www.epix.net/~dcamp/

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 6 Apr 1998 to 7 Apr 1998
**********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/7/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 5 Apr 1998 to 6 Apr 1998               98-04-07 00:01:57
There are 5 messages totalling 132 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. fling address (3)
  2. unsubscribe
  3. Strine - Death of a Lexicographer

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 6 Apr 1998 11:03:40 EST
From:    simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: fling address

Sorry to bother the list with this, but if someone has the
fling address handy, would you backchannel it to me please?

Thanks,

beth simon

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 6 Apr 1998 12:23:35 -0500
From:    HEATHER C BAIER  S_HCBAIER[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.CLARION.EDU 
Subject: unsubscribe

Please help me!!  I've really enjoyed receiving messages but now I want out.
How do I unsubscribe to this list serve?  What do I type and to whom do I send
 it?  thanks very much,
         Heather Baier

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 6 Apr 1998 11:41:53 -0500
From:    Mary Bucholtz  bucholtz[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TAMU.EDU 
Subject: Re: fling address

Beth,

Here it is: fling[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]listserv.oit.unc.edu.

Mary

 Sorry to bother the list with this, but if someone has the
 fling address handy, would you backchannel it to me please?
 
 Thanks,
 
 beth simon

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 6 Apr 1998 11:43:30 -0500
From:    Mary Bucholtz  bucholtz[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]TAMU.EDU 
Subject: Re: fling address

My apologies to the list for failing to backchannel as requested.

Mary

 Beth,
 
 Here it is: fling[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]listserv.oit.unc.edu.
 
 Mary
 
  Sorry to bother the list with this, but if someone has the
  fling address handy, would you backchannel it to me please?
  
  Thanks,
  
  beth simon

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 6 Apr 1998 10:39:33 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: Strine - Death of a Lexicographer

The obituary of Alastair Morrison, Painter and author 1911-1998 appeared
today in the Sydney Morning Herald.

A brief summary:
He saw himself as a painter and designer but Alastair Morrison was
better known as the scholarly Professor Afferbeck Lauder.
Morrison/Lauder, who has died in Fremantle (West Australia) aged 86
after a brief illness, revealed in 1965 that Australians spoke not
English, but a language called Strine.

Morrison's first book of Strine, "Let Stalk Strine" (1965), was an
instant bestseller. Afferbeck Lauder, Professor of Strine Studies at the
University of Sinny, presented to the English speaking world the first
annotated lexicon of Strine usage.

Some entries:

Baked necks: A popular breakfast dish. Others include emma necks;
scremblex; and fright shops.

Dimension: The usual response to "Thenk you" or "Thenk, smite"

Garment: An invitation to visit. As in: "Garment seamy anile seward icon
do." And: "Garment the garden, Maud, I mirrored the gaiter loan."

Jess Tefter; Lefter: It is necessary to. As in: "She'll jess tefter get
chews twit." or "You lefter filner form."

Semmitch: Two slices of bread with a filling in between, e.g.
M-semmitch; semmon semmitch; chee semmitch.

Spin-ear Mitch: Much alike, closely resembling one another. As in "He's
the spin-ear mitch of his old man."

Translations upon request! Ross Chambers
--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia
maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non e solo agli antipodi, e lontana da tutto,
  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything,
sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 5 Apr 1998 to 6 Apr 1998
**********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/6/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 3 Apr 1998 to 5 Apr 1998               98-04-06 00:00:01
There are 2 messages totalling 64 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. "The Big Apple"
  2. turns of phrase

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 4 Apr 1998 23:23:33 -0500
From:    Gerald Cohen  gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UMR.EDU 
Subject: "The Big Apple"

  Barry Popik continues to record correct and incorrect treatments of "The
Big Apple."  Here is his latest message sent to me on the subject.

.X-From_: Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com  Sat Apr  4 19:35:49 1998
From: Bapopik  Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com 
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 20:35:44 EST
To: gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]umr.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Subject: Complete Idiot's Travel Guide to NYC

     A complete idiot is more reliable than the Society for New York City
History (which thinks "the Big Apple" came from a prostitute named Eve in
1803, simmering largely unnoticed for 117 years) and the Christian Science
Monitor (which cites jazz references only).

THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S TRAVEL GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY (1998)
(NOTE:  This company also does the Frommer Guides.)
Pg. 11:

Ever wonder why New York is called "The Big Apple"?  The general idea is that,
like an apple, the city is "ripe with possibilities."  Most people credit the
term to journalist John J. Fitz Gerald of the long-defunct _Morning
Telegraph_, who heard it used by stable hands at a New Orleans racetrack in
the 1920s and thereafter used it to refer to New York's own tracks.  Jazz
musicians used it to refer to New York in general (and Harlem in Particular)
throughout the 1930s, but the term slowly fell out of use thereafter and was
more or less fogotten by the 1970s, when it was used in an ad campaign run by
the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau.

---Gerald Cohen
    (The "ripe with possibilities" sentence above is questionable, but the
rest is accurate. The ad campaign began in 1970 or 1971)



gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]umr.edu

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 5 Apr 1998 00:21:57 -0800
From:    Kim & Rima McKinzey  rkm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SLIP.NET 
Subject: turns of phrase

A friend who is moving, donated some of her excess furniture to some recent
Russian immigrants.  When they told her they were computer professionals
(or something like that), she encouragingly said she didn't think they'd
have much trouble getting appropriate positions.

The husband then said, "We are having hopeness."

I liked it.

Rima

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 3 Apr 1998 to 5 Apr 1998
**********************************************

======================================================================

From: Automatic digest processor (4/3/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests

         ADS-L Digest - 1 Apr 1998 to 2 Apr 1998               98-04-03 00:00:13
There are 7 messages totalling 260 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. freshman composition--again (3)
  2. Chaises Longues and US catch phrases abroad
  3. truncation
  4. RE Re: Think Different
  5. ADS-L Digest - 29 Mar 1998 to 30 Mar 1998

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 1 Apr 1998 21:30:26 -0800
From:    Devon Coles  dcoles[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HORIZON.BC.CA 
Subject: Re: freshman composition--again

Further to Peter Richardson's comments:

As it was in the beginning, is now, and likely ever shall be, I am a
student. I happen to write (mostly) A papers, and cringe when I see courses
that evaluate solely by quizzes and exams. Generally, I avoid them like the
plague.
I believe the reason many students don't write excellent papers is that they
have never been taught an essential aspect of the process.
I see an essay as my turn in the conversation. I have been granted the
floor. Along with the privilege of speaking, I am charged with the
responsibility of not wasting everyone else's time. I am expected to speak
on topic, and not simply repeat what the previous speaker has already
addressed. If I disagree with what has been said I am expected, first, to
demonstrate that I understand clearly what has been said, secondly, not to
misrepresent the previous speaker's ideas, and thirdly,  to make clear my
reasons for taking exception. I am expected to speak in a register
appropriate to the conversation and to contribute something worthy of
mention. Sadly, I am yet to hear any MA teaching assistant, doctoral
candidate, PhD or tenured professor address this essay writing in these
terms. Pity.

Devon Coles
dcoles[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]horizon.bc.ca

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 2 Apr 1998 10:47:36 +1000
From:    Ross Chambers  maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OZEMAIL.COM.AU 
Subject: Chaises Longues and US catch phrases abroad

 From the Sydney Morning Herald April 2, 1998:

"A chaise longue by any other name...

"The chaise longue is a symbol of elegant repose, lending grace and =

charm to drawing rooms and bedrooms through the years. Many women, both =

famous and unknown, have been painted reclining on a chaise longue.

"Strictly speaking, a chaise longue is a kind of elongated seat or =

couch, which usually has only one end and no back. It means 'long =

chair.'

"But time has blurred the rules. Some sofas and settees are referred to =

as chaises longues." etc.

How nice it is to live in a country which still speaks English ! :-)

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

"cool beans" heard in New Zealand in 1997, spoken by visiting San =

Franciscan, who was also given to "Go, Bears!" (I assume a football team =

rallying cry?) and calling his work comrades "Mr Potato-head"--none of =

the above stuck to the local vocabulary, and neither was he to be =

persuaded, during a 5 month residency, that the 'Z' in 'NZ' was =

pronounced 'zed', not 'zee' --altogether an unsuccessful cultural =

exchange.

Kind regards - Ross Chambers


-- =

                                                                               
 =

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ross Chambers           Sydney       Australia  =

maelduin[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ozemail.com.au

"L'Australia non =E8 solo agli antipodi, =E8 lontana da tutto, =

  talora anche da sa stessa."

(Australia is not only  at the Antipodes, she is away from everything, =

sometimes even from herself)

Umberto Eco

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 2 Apr 1998 16:21:34 -0500
From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
Subject: truncation

Did anyone else receive the issue "ADS-L Digest - 31 Mar 1998 to 1 Apr 1998" in
 cut-off form? The copy I received
ends:

school peers were surveyed, virtually would say the word was "obscene". 
 Roseburg was a pretty conservative place
. .

ending in  space dot space dot 

-- Mark

       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 2 Apr 1998 17:10:47 -0500
From:    frank abate  abatef[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM 
Subject: Re: freshman composition--again

Devon Coles's statement on an approach to essay writing is very sensible,=

and should be taught.

Frank Abate

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 2 Apr 1998 17:10:56 -0500
From:    frank abate  abatef[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM 
Subject: Re: RE Re: Think Different

Message text written by Beverly Flanigan:

 First of all, ad agencies neither influence
usage (goodly or badly) nor do they "break grammar rules" and "get away
with their brazen attempts to cover grammatical errors"--they simply do
what ordinary people in large measure do, and nobody notices but us. 

************************
I don't agree with the first part of this, but the last part is on the
right track.

It is my contention that advertising copy is far MORE influential than it=

has been given credit for.  The ubiquity and penetration of some national=

ads -- not only via TV and radio, but also on billboards, in magazines, a=
nd
even in coupons that come with Sunday newspapers -- is often very, very
great.  There are many millions of people who are at exposed to some of
these.  Much of it may "wash over," but some surely some of this "sticks,=
"
and must have an effect, whether conscious or not.

I do not mean to say that the ad copywriters are ALWAYS inventing new
things, or breaking new ground (though they do this, too, sometimes).  Fo=
r
the most part, I think the copywriters have their ears to the ground, and=

try to respond to linguistic norms and trends.  In other words, they are
most often reactive.  But once they choose to use some word, spelling, or=

usage, the effect in terms of increased frequency of the item can be
overwhelming.

I believe that one ad may very often be a much greater influence than a
hundred articles in any newspaper or journal, however respected or
well-edited the latter may be.  Lexicographers often favor evidence from
edited print publications, but I believe more attention should be paid to=

ad copy, including grocery coupons, whose circulation is often in the
millions.  Nowhere near that number look at any newspaper, not to mention=

specialized journals, yet the established sources receive far more play i=
n
citation files.

Frank Abate

------------------------------

Date:    Thu, 2 Apr 1998 18:20:36 -0500
From:    Beverly Flanigan  flanigan[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU 
Subject: Re: freshman composition--again

Bravo, Devon!  I don't teach Fr. Comp. anymore (having switched from
English to Linguistics 20 years ago), but when I teach TESOL grad students
how to teach writing to non-native learners of English, I insist on the
very principles you follow.  In fact (old-fashioned Walter Ong protegee
that I am/was), I teach them Aristotle's model in the _Rhetoric_!  It still
works.
And by the way, all members of our Linguistics faculty, junior and senior,
take turns teaching our introductory "Nature of Language" course--it's
comparable to Fr. Comp. and keeps our feet firmly on the ground.


At 09:30 PM 4/1/98 -0800, you wrote:
 Further to Peter Richardson's comments:
 
 As it was in the beginning, is now, and likely ever shall be, I am a
 student. I happen to write (mostly) A papers, and cringe when I see courses
 that evaluate solely by quizzes and exams. Generally, I avoid them like the
 plague.
 I believe the reason many students don't write excellent papers is that they
 have never been taught an essential aspect of the process.
 I see an essay as my turn in the conversation. I have been granted the
 floor. Along with the privilege of speaking, I am charged with the
 responsibility of not wasting everyone else's time. I am expected to speak
 on topic, and not simply repeat what the previous speaker has already
 addressed. If I disagree with what has been said I am expected, first, to
 demonstrate that I understand clearly what has been said, secondly, not to
 misrepresent the previous speaker's ideas, and thirdly,  to make clear my
 reasons for taking exception. I am expected to speak in a register
 appropriate to the conversation and to contribute something worthy of
 mention. Sadly, I am yet to hear any MA teaching assistant, doctoral
 candidate, PhD or tenured professor address this essay writing in these
 terms. Pity.
 
 Devon Coles
 dcoles[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]horizon.bc.ca
 

------------------------------

Date:    Fri, 3 Apr 1998 09:35:45 +0800
From:    Gao Yongwei  951208[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FUDAN.EDU.CN 
Subject: Re: ADS-L Digest - 29 Mar 1998 to 30 Mar 1998

Dear sysops,

I've got to leave this linguistic bonanza as I am repeatedly asked
to pay for the storing fee on the campus net.

Thanks for your help.

GYW

------------------------------

End of ADS-L Digest - 1 Apr 1998 to 2 Apr 1998
**********************************************

======================================================================