| Author |
Message |
T. Z.
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 11:30 pm
Post subject: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensical |
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A lady is late for 2 appointments, and finds
two guys waiting outside her office.
She apologizes and asks which is which.
One guy says:
(versions)
SIMPLE: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock."
THE: "I'm the 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
HYBRID: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
| Quote: |
The SIMPLE-version seems more common than the
THE-version.
|
THE-version would be preferred if she mistook the two
at first.
| Quote: | In my mind, The SIMPLE-version is just sloppy
English,
and the THE-version is correct metonymy.
|
Are there similar utterances in other languages?
German: Ich bin ... und er ist ...
French: Je suis ... et il est ...
| Quote: | Isn't it true that correct metonymy requires use of
such "THE"?
"the Crown"
"Then the press descended on the scene."
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
BUT
"Washington responded swiftly to the invasion."
(which is ok; not a counter-example)
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CyberCypher
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:19 am
Post subject: Re: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensi |
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T. Z. wrote on 09 Jun 2004:
| Quote: |
A lady is late for 2 appointments, and finds
two guys waiting outside her office.
She apologizes and asks which is which.
One guy says:
(versions)
SIMPLE: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock."
THE: "I'm the 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
HYBRID: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
The SIMPLE-version seems more common than the
THE-version.
THE-version would be preferred if she mistook the two
at first.
In my mind, The SIMPLE-version is just sloppy
English,
and the THE-version is correct metonymy.
Are there similar utterances in other languages?
German: Ich bin ... und er ist ...
French: Je suis ... et il est ...
|
Japanese: Watashi wa ... de, kanojo wa ...
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet. |
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Peter T. Daniels
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:44 am
Post subject: Re: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensi |
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T. Z. wrote:
| Quote: |
A lady is late for 2 appointments, and finds
two guys waiting outside her office.
She apologizes and asks which is which.
One guy says:
(versions)
SIMPLE: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock."
THE: "I'm the 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
HYBRID: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
The SIMPLE-version seems more common than the
THE-version.
|
Where could you be getting this? The "SIMPLE-version" is impossible.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:49 am
Post subject: Re: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensi |
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Peter T. Daniels wrote:
| Quote: | T. Z. wrote:
A lady is late for 2 appointments, and finds
two guys waiting outside her office.
She apologizes and asks which is which.
One guy says:
(versions)
SIMPLE: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock."
THE: "I'm the 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
HYBRID: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
The SIMPLE-version seems more common than the
THE-version.
Where could you be getting this? The "SIMPLE-version" is impossible.
|
Naah, not impossible, only rare.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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John Atkinson
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:38 am
Post subject: Re: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensi |
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"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote ...
| Quote: | T. Z. wrote:
A lady is late for 2 appointments, and finds
two guys waiting outside her office.
She apologizes and asks which is which.
One guy says:
(versions)
SIMPLE: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock."
THE: "I'm the 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
HYBRID: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
The SIMPLE-version seems more common than the
THE-version.
Where could you be getting this? The "SIMPLE-version" is impossible.
|
Not to me. I'd interpret the two versions a little differently:
"I'm the 2 o'clock, he's the 3 o'clock" would answer the question "Which of
you is which" if the answerer interpreted this to mean "Which of my (regular
hourly) appointments were each of you booked in for?" (Maybe she's a
psychoanalyst.)
"I'm 2 o'clock, he's 3 o'clock" would answer the same question, if the
answerer interpreted it to mean "What time was I supposed to see each of
you?" (She doesn't have her whole day divided into a series of
appointments. Maybe she's an engineer and they're salesmen, who rang her up
and told her they would be by at those times.)
No doubt one could think of a suitable scenario for the hybrid version too
....
John |
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Chris Kern
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:08 pm
Post subject: Re: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensi |
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On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 00:19:19 +0000 (UTC), CyberCypher
<cybercypher@e-garfield.com> posted the following:
| Quote: | T. Z. wrote on 09 Jun 2004:
German: Ich bin ... und er ist ...
French: Je suis ... et il est ...
Japanese: Watashi wa ... de, kanojo wa ...
|
I think that Japanese is grammatically different enough from English
that it's not quite the same -- because "wa" is a "topic marker",
saying "watashi wa neko" to mean "I like cats" (which can be done
given the appropriate conversational context, or at least I believe
so) creates a different structure than the equivalent English phrase.
Even "watashi wa neko desu" does little to change that because "desu"
has a rather vague meaning, particularly in recent casual speech where
people can say things like "wakaranai desu".
-Chris |
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Evan Kirshenbaum
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:52 pm
Post subject: Re: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock." -- facially nonsensi |
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"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> writes:
| Quote: | T. Z. wrote:
A lady is late for 2 appointments, and finds
two guys waiting outside her office.
She apologizes and asks which is which.
One guy says:
(versions)
SIMPLE: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's 3 o'clock."
THE: "I'm the 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
HYBRID: "I'm 2 o'clock and he's the 3 o'clock."
The SIMPLE-version seems more common than the
THE-version.
Where could you be getting this? The "SIMPLE-version" is impossible.
|
In this context, I pretty much agree. If the context hadn't set up
the word "appopintment", though, it can work. Say the one person is
speaking or manning a booth at two and the other at three.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Its like grasping the difference
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |between what one usually considers
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |a 'difficult' problem, and what
|*is* a difficult problem. The day
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com |one understands *why* counting all
(650)857-7572 |the molecules in the Universe isn't
|difficult...there's the leap.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Tina Marie Holmboe |
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