Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 23:45:49 CST

From: "Donald M. Lance" ENGDL[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIZZOU1.BITNET

Subject: Re: Ozark(s)



Bethany Dumas' example of Ozark-"correction" has a nice ambiguity.

She apparently meant "Folk Speech in the Ozark [Mountains] and [the]

Appalachian Mountains" (Folk Speech in the Ozark and Appalachian Mountains),

but those who edited her title (incorrected it) wandered into grammatical

fuzziness, producing "Folk Speech in the Ozarks and Appalachian Mountains."

Had they (could be he or she) _corrected_ the phrase they would have

inserted "[and] in the [Appalachian Mountains]." I suspect that the

Speaker's Bureau "editor" didn't just commit a "syntactic blunder" but

got a little brain-scrambling from trying to sort out issues underlying

the current trend to add -s to "Ozark" in attributive position. Thanks,

Bethany, for the contribution that verifies that obfuscation often pushes

clarification aside. DMLance