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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:27 am
Post subject: Re: Positive "anymore" [was: Re: Stress and articulation [wa |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | "Maria Conlon" said that Robert Lieblich wrote:
In fairness, I think unskunking does occur, but only when the old
generation dies out and the meaning fully changes. An example is
"nauseous," which has meant "nauseated" for so long that you have to
be in your sixties -- or a usage fanatic -- to think there's
anything wrong with using it that way. In another couple of
decades, no one will remember the controversy. Another example is
"data," so far along the road to being singular that soon no one
will remember or care that it began life as a plural.
Yes, in another generation or so people will probably be
ordering their steak media rare with no one taking exception
to it.
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Have you ever seen a medium strip? No, not *that* kind of medium.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
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John Lawler
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:13 am
Post subject: Re: Positive "anymore" [was: Re: Stress and articulation [wa |
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Mike Lyle <mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> writes:
| Quote: | John Holmes writes:
Donna Richoux writes:
The 1946 Merriam-Webster collegiate has no entry for "anymore". It
has: anybody, anyhow, anyone, anything, anyway, anyways, anywise.
The current edition (MW11) dates it to the 14th century and says:
Although both anymore and any more are found in
written use, in the 20th century anymore is the more
common styling. Anymore is regularly used in
negative <no one can be natural anymore -- May
Sarton>, interrogative <do you read much anymore?>,
and conditional <if you do that anymore, I'll leave
contexts and in certain positive constructions <the
Washingtonian is too sophisticated to believe
anymore in solutions -- Russell Baker>. In many
regions of the United States the use of anymore in
sense 2 is quite common in positive constructions,
especially in speech <everybody's cool anymore
[...]
Are they right to call the Russell Baker example a positive
construction? Doesn't it mean that the Washingtonian is so
sophisticated that it does not believe in solutions any more?
That looks like enough of a negative trigger to me. I wonder
whether John Lawler is reading this.
It's certainly negative in sense: it's only the _construction_ which
is positive, at least in the dubious sense of not containing "not" or
a similar word. "Too xx to yy" is a clearly negative expression.
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If you take a peek at my piece on Negative Polarity Items (see .sig),
you'll find "any more" (in whatever spelling -- spelling isn't a part
of language, just a part of literacy engineering) as an NPI, and you'll
find "too" as a Negative Trigger.
"Too X to VP" means something like "So X that NOT VP". The infinitive in the
Russell Baker case is a relative infinitive with the direct object equivalent
to the modified NP (the Washingtonian). So the whole thing means that
the Washingtonian is so sophisticated that one can't believe it anymore.
Which is where the "anymore" gets its license from. This is the way we
use NPIs to ferret out semantic negation.
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/npis.html
-------------------------------------------------------
"Whomever controls language controls politics."
http://inthefray.com/html/article.php?sid=1073 |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 5:16 am
Post subject: Re: Positive "anymore" [was: Re: Stress and articulation [wa |
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John Lawler wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | [...]
-- spelling isn't a part
of language, just a part of literacy engineering) [...]
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Which is incontestable. Except, as I've wondered here before, that in
a language community where literacy is the norm, it may not be. There
are current language features which depend on near-universal
literacy, which _are_ based on spelling. It's commonplace, for
example, for a speaker to clarify his meaning by an emphatic
spelling-pronunciation. I feel I could think of more interesting
features, but that's quite revolutionary enough for one evening.
--
Mike.
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:48 am
Post subject: Written and spoken language [was: Re: Positive "anymore" [wa |
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On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 22:13:36 GMT, jlawler@umich.edu (John
Lawler) said:
[about "any more" and "anymore"]
[...]
| Quote: | spelling isn't a part of language, just a part of literacy
engineering
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So when we distinguish between "four" and "fore", or between
"two", "to", and "too", or between "reconnaissance" and
"recognizance", we're not dealing with language, just
literary engineering?
That sounds like hogwash to me.
Language is expressed in symbols. Speech uses oral symbols;
writing uses graphic symbols. I see no reason to consider
either one more important than the other.
By the way I posted in alt.usage.english ten years or so ago
about "reconnaissance" and "recognizance" having the same
pronunciation. My posting was met with howls of indignation
from people who insisted that the "g" is *always* pronounced
in "recognizance". 'Tain't so: See any good dictionary.
Anyway, "any more" and "anymore" have usefully distinct
meanings. In writing they're distinguished by spelling. In
speech they're often distinguished by intonation. |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 7:02 am
Post subject: Re: Written and spoken language [was: Re: Positive "anymore" |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | By the way I posted in alt.usage.english ten years or so ago
about "reconnaissance" and "recognizance" having the same
pronunciation. My posting was met with howls of indignation
from people who insisted that the "g" is *always* pronounced
in "recognizance". 'Tain't so: See any good dictionary.
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Well, what do you know! There are enough speakers who drop the "g" to get
that pronunciation into the dictionaries. I'm really surprised, NTTAWWT.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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John Dawkins
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 7:08 am
Post subject: Re: Written and spoken language [was: Re: Positive "anymore" |
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In article <46ktl190f8qi481vj667p7urn39d5d7m0d@4ax.com>,
Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
| Quote: | By the way I posted in alt.usage.english ten years or so ago
about "reconnaissance" and "recognizance" having the same
pronunciation. My posting was met with howls of indignation
from people who insisted that the "g" is *always* pronounced
in "recognizance". 'Tain't so: See any good dictionary.
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The first three dictionaries I checked disagree with you. Perhaps
"good dictionary" means "a dictionary that doesn't recognize the the
pronunciation of 'recognizance' in which the 'g' is heard.
--
J. |
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:16 pm
Post subject: "recognizance" with silent "g" [was: Re: Written and spoken |
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On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:03:57 -0700, John Dawkins
<artfldodgr@aol.com> said:
| Quote: | In article <46ktl190f8qi481vj667p7urn39d5d7m0d@4ax.com>,
Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
By the way I posted in alt.usage.english ten years or so ago
about "reconnaissance" and "recognizance" having the same
pronunciation. My posting was met with howls of indignation
from people who insisted that the "g" is *always* pronounced
in "recognizance". 'Tain't so: See any good dictionary.
The first three dictionaries I checked disagree with you. Perhaps
"good dictionary" means "a dictionary that doesn't recognize the the
pronunciation of 'recognizance' in which the 'g' is heard.
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I don't know what dictionaries you checked, but the
following dictionaries recognize the silent "g"
pronunciation of "recognizance".
_Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary_
_Webster's New World Dictionary_
_Random House Webster's College Dictionary_
_New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_
_Chambers Dictionary_ (1993 Edition)
_American Heritage Dictionary Fourth Edition_
_Infoplease Dictionary_
_Webster's Third New International Dictionary_
Two dictionaries that don't have the alternative "g"-less
pronunciation are
_Concise Oxford Dictionary Eighth Edition_
_Oxford American Dictionary_ (paperback)
I've never regarded either of them as a really good
dictionary.
I first heard of the word "recognizance" from our
eighth-grade English teacher. He gave us the word,
pronouncing it [rikA:n@z@ns] and offered a free Milk Nickel
to anyone who could spell it, the object being to amaze the
class with the revelation that it had a silent "g".
I raised my hand and, to his chagrin, said "r e c o n n a i
s s a n c e". He bought me the Milk Nickel, but he wasn't
real happy about it.
Before becoming a teacher, he had worked for a number of
years as a reporter on the _Seattle Post Intelligencer_, so
I have little doubt the "g"-less pronunciation was
well-known to newspapermen, at least in those days (1934).
He seemed to think it was the only pronunciation, so I
continued to think it was for the next sixty years. I don't
know that I've ever heard the word used in actual speech,
and I never was aware of the "g" pronunciation until I
brought the word up in this newsgroup.
(The Milk Nickel was a highly popular chocolate-covered ice
cream on a stick that sold for five cents. Now and then when
you got down to the stick you found that it had the words
"Free Milk Nickel" printed on it, so you could use the stick
to get another Milk Nickel at no charge.) |
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Raymond S. Wise
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:02 pm
Post subject: Re: "recognizance" with silent "g" [was: Re: Written and spo |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:03:57 -0700, John Dawkins
artfldodgr@aol.com> said:
In article <46ktl190f8qi481vj667p7urn39d5d7m0d@4ax.com>,
Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
By the way I posted in alt.usage.english ten years or so ago
about "reconnaissance" and "recognizance" having the same
pronunciation. My posting was met with howls of indignation
from people who insisted that the "g" is *always* pronounced
in "recognizance". 'Tain't so: See any good dictionary.
The first three dictionaries I checked disagree with you. Perhaps
"good dictionary" means "a dictionary that doesn't recognize the the
pronunciation of 'recognizance' in which the 'g' is heard.
I don't know what dictionaries you checked, but the
following dictionaries recognize the silent "g"
pronunciation of "recognizance".
_Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary_
_Webster's New World Dictionary_
_Random House Webster's College Dictionary_
_New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_
_Chambers Dictionary_ (1993 Edition)
_American Heritage Dictionary Fourth Edition_
_Infoplease Dictionary_
_Webster's Third New International Dictionary_
Two dictionaries that don't have the alternative "g"-less
pronunciation are
_Concise Oxford Dictionary Eighth Edition_
_Oxford American Dictionary_ (paperback)
I've never regarded either of them as a really good
dictionary.
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A historical note:
Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary has two pronunciations for
"recognition," but only one for "recognizance":
From
<http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster%27s&word=recognition&use1828=on>
RECOGNITION, n. reconish''on or recognish''on.
From
<http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster%27s&word=recognizance&use1828=on>
RECOGNIZANCE, n. recon''izance.
The 1895 *Century Dictionary* has only a "g"-sounded pronunciation for
"recognition" but has both "g"-sounded and "g"-silent pronunciations
for "recognizance.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com |
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:35 pm
Post subject: "recognizance" pronunciation [was: Re: Written and spoken la |
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On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:03:57 -0700, John Dawkins
<artfldodgr@aol.com> said:
| Quote: | In article <46ktl190f8qi481vj667p7urn39d5d7m0d@4ax.com>,
Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
By the way I posted in alt.usage.english ten years or so ago
about "reconnaissance" and "recognizance" having the same
pronunciation. My posting was met with howls of indignation
from people who insisted that the "g" is *always* pronounced
in "recognizance". 'Tain't so: See any good dictionary.
The first three dictionaries I checked disagree with you. Perhaps
"good dictionary" means "a dictionary that doesn't recognize the the
pronunciation of 'recognizance' in which the 'g' is heard.
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I doubt that there is any modern dictionary that doesn't
recognize the pronunciation of "recognizance" in which the
"g" is heard.
A trivial exception would be a dictionary that doesn't have
any entry at all for "recognizance". The _Cambridge
Advanced Learner's Dictionary_ is one such. |
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Bob Cunningham
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 10:13 pm
Post subject: Re: "recognizance" with silent "g" [was: Re: Written and spo |
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On 26 Oct 2005 00:02:19 -0700, "Raymond S. Wise"
<mplsray@my-deja.com> said:
| Quote: | A historical note:
Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary has two pronunciations for
"recognition," but only one for "recognizance":
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The 1909 edition of _Webster's New International_ has the
two pronunciations of "recognizance" with neither of them
tagged.
_Webster's New International Dictionary Second Ediion
Unabridged_ (1934) has the two pronunciations with the
"g"-less one tagged "esp[ecially] Law".
_Webster's Third New International_ (1966) has the two
pronunciations with the "g"-less one tagged "sometimes".
_Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate_ (2003), has the two
pronunciations with neither of them tagged. |
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