4 ms·
Ordering of conjoined elements in English (1975) [pdf]
- hurin 12y agoThe HN title is quiet misleading - it's a paper about ordering of conjoined elements in English.
- dang 12y agoOk, let's try that.
- evincarofautumn 12y agoThere is a new phrasal verb “be a thing” which lets us conveniently talk about such constructions. That is, “now and then” is a thing—an idiom, with a specific meaning outside the wording—but “then and now” is not a thing. You will note that all of the semantic constraints they propose place the item with a “positive” aspect first—I wrote a blog post about this[1]. There is also a related notion of “stormy petrel”[2] which I wrote a poem about[3] back when I had lots of hair. [1]: http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2014/08/adjective-valence-and-linguistic.html http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2014/08/adjective-valenc... [2]: http://www.kith.org/logos/words/lower/petrels.html http://www.kith.org/logos/words/lower/petrels.html [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRlpRFs2L30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRlpRFs2L30
- baddox 12y agoAs a side note, "then and now" is actually a common phrase used to describe comparisons of old and recent depictions of the same subject, e.g. photographs of celebrities.
- evincarofautumn 12y agoD’oh, you’re right. A better example is “cat and mouse” versus “mouse and cat” from the paper.
- aparadja 12y agoCould someone more skilled than me in English explain the sudden "Whorfer" ending to the paper on page 103? It makes no sense to me.
- defen 12y ago"Whorfer" = adherent of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which (very roughly) says that language structure and vocabulary influences or determines what thoughts can be thought. e.g. if your language does not have a word for "yellow", do you classify colors the same way as someone who speaks a language that does?