Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 08:25:16 -0500

From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU

Subject: from Lynne re candy



Lynne asked me to forward the following message, which she accidentally

sent to me instead of to the whole list:



From: "M. Lynne Murphy" 104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]muse.arts.wits.ac.za

Organization: University of the Witwatersrand

Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 13:46:13 GMT + 2:00

Subject: round candy bars



A candy bar has to be a bar --

a loosely defined bar in that it's possible to have a square candy bar

or possibly even a roundish one, although I can't think of any examples

of that. A bag of small items like M&Ms can't be a candy bar.

--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)



well, we certainly have roundish--as in round cornered--candy bars

(baby ruth, mounds, etc. right?), but is one of those big york

peppermint patties a candy bar?



the reason i was wondering about this (in case you were wondering) is

that i discuss chocolates with my semantics students here when

working on mass/count distinctions. a peculiarity of s.a. english

(the branford dictionary lists this as "substandard"--not every s.

african does it) is that a bar of chocolate (here: a slab) is "a

chocolate." i discovered this by accident after assigning anna

wierzbicka's article on "oats and wheat" which has an extensive

argument that "a chocolate" is something that you can pop into your

mouth (other criteria too) but anything larger is "some chocolate" or

"a X of chocolate". the students, of course, thought w. didn't know

english. so, i got to thinking about what we do with chocolates in

amurkin english.



thanks to everyone for all the responses on candy bars and

measurements. re: centigrade temperatures: the trick is to move to

a place where the weather is usually pretty much the same, so you

don't have to worry about it.



lynne



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