LINGUIST List 4.850

Mon 18 Oct 1993

Disc: British Morphology, Reciprocals

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1. "Reinhard, Re: "Go with," Non-American versus American English morphology
2. , Re: 4.830 Qs: Rochemont, Idioms, Turkish reduplication, Spe
3. Joseph Brown, RE: 4.760 Reciprocals (fwd)

> 3)
> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 93 16:00:13 +0000
> From: Bernadette Plunkett <bp4tower.york.ac.uk>
> Subject: British versus American morphology
>
> I would never call someone who cheats habitually a "cheater" but
> always a "cheat" and I'm sure there are other cases of this contrast that I
> can't bring to mind, right now.

The following is only vaguely related to this: American English lacks the
verb `to burgle' but has the words `burglar', `burglary' and
`burglarious'. I used to assume that `to burgle' was dropped and the
specificially American verb `to burglarize' was created on the basis of
the noun `burglar'. However, it seems that `burglar' came first, being a
medieval French borrowing (_burgler_ < Old English _burg_ `shelter',
`hiding place'), and that `to burgle' was created in Britain as late as
in the 19th century.

Message 2: Re: 4.830 Qs: Rochemont, Idioms, Turkish reduplication, Spe

> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 19:05 EST
> From: KROVETZ%coinscs.umass.edu

> The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) provides
> both British and American spellings for a number of words. I
> noticed that some words are only given with the "American"
> spelling - coloration (in contrast to colourfast and colourful)

Surely this has nothing to do with American or other spelling but
with the fact that colour, honour etc. were/are more integrated into
the general language while the others signal their learned origin by
being closer to the Latin spelling. Note also pronounce but
pronunciation (frequently misspelt as pronounciation). The spelling
of colour, honour etc. reflects the French pronunciation at when
French was most influential in Britain. In a sense American spelling
here amounts to a return to the Latin spelling.

pp
 ========================================================
(Dr) Peter PAUL Phone: +61-3-565.2295 (direct)
Linguistics, MONASH UNIVERSITY +61-3-565.5050 (Secr.)
CLAYTON, VIC 3168 FAX: +61-3-565.2294 (Dept.l)
Australia Email: [see below]
<ppaularts.cc.monash.edu.au> or <ppaulMONU1.cc.monash.edu.au>

Message 3: RE: 4.760 Reciprocals (fwd)

On Sept. 27, Claudia Brugman wrote in response to Dale Russell's
posting on reciprocals:

> There's a somewhat similar use of _each_ following _between_, e.g.
>
> Place a sheet of waxed paper between each layer of warm cookies
>
> Of course this is semantically anomalous, since _between_ requires a dual
> (or plural, for some speakers) object.

I believe "between each" is a multi-word preposition that began its life as a
combination of the preposition "between" and the multi-word pronoun "each
(of)". Etymologically speaking, there were two historical 'accidents' that
resulted in this anomaly. First, a multi-word preposition was constructed
from two rather than three separate lexical items (i.e. a preposition and a
pronoun composed of a determiner and a preposition), and second, the final
optional proposition was elided, thus resulting in a multi-word preposition
with only two words. In common usage, "each" is then construed as a
determiner rather than as a pronoun, and hence the ungrammaticality.

Thus:

 "Place a sheet of waxed paper between each layer of warm cookies"

is understood to mean:

 "Place a sheet of waxed paper between each (of) (the) layer(s) of
warm cookies".

Joe Brown
joebrownu.washington.edu