LINGUIST List 3.738

Fri 02 Oct 1992

Qs: Spoonerisms, Drift, Like, Chinese

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1. mark, Spoonerism
2. hans gilde, Re: 3.633 Linguistic Drift
3. , like
4. , Are you interested in a Chinese list?

A recent posting writes:
 > My favorite antimony is the story of the hanged prisoner, and one
 > of the best discussion I've seen of antimony and paradox is

"Antimony" is a metal (symbol Sb, from Latin stibium); he means
"antinomy". I wonder how common this spoonerism (metathesis, if
you want to be formal) is? Neither word is likely to be much
used except by the learned.

My dictionary says that the [name of the] metal is
primary-stressed on the first syllable, and the paradox on the
second; but "antinomy" is one of those words which, on the face
of them, I have to FORCE myself to stress correctly. I wonder
how much effect that has on the confusion; and also whether
there's an influence from whatever often causes children to
pronounce "animal" as "aminal".

 Mark A. Mandel
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA

Message 2: Re: 3.633 Linguistic Drift

Is there a possibility that English is forming a new linguistic rule
that stipulates that compounded personal pronouns must be in the
nominative regardless of conventional considerations of case. I have
heard and read examples of this phenomenon's occurrance not only after
prepostions but as direct and indirect objects. Is this tendency more
prevalent in American than in British English?

Hans Gilde hmgunlinfounl.edu
 (402) 472-1786

	Has anyone made a start on analyzing one of the major semantic
viruses of the 90s, the ubiquitous "like"? (Attested: So I'm there,
like goin' "yeah"; He like works, like fixing like tires.) It seems
to function variously as a filler, a marker of concession, approximation,
qualification, emphasis, irony, disbelief...What else?

Terry Gordon (WTGORDONAC.DAL.CA)

Dear Friends:

We would like to set up a discussion list that promote
communication among teachers, researchers and students of
Chinese. Topics for such discussion may include: 1)theory
and practice in teaching Chinese as a foreign language,
2)linguistics, literature and the teaching of Chinese, 3)
technology and the teaching of Chinese, 4)creative classroom
activities...

If you think this is a good idea, please send your comments
and your e-mail address to one of the names below. Once we
find enough people interested in this, we will try to find a
site for the list.

Jianhua Bai,
Kenyon College
baivax001.kenyon.edu

Tim Xie, UC Davis
twxieucdavis.edu