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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Query Details


Query Subject:   RE: "To tide someone over"
Author:   MARC PICARD
Submitter Email:  click here to access email

Linguistic LingField(s):  General Linguistics

Query:   In her summary of the geographical distribution, semantic range and origin of ''to tide someone over'', Erica Hofmann Kencke mentioned that some speakers have modified this to . Her interpretation, with which I totally agree, is that it is 'probably a construction by which a speaker ''corrects'' an incomprehensible idiom to a form that seems to make more sense'. I've personally heard a number of similar ''corrections'' over the years, e.g., , , , (I kid you not), etc. Is there a name for this sort of thing (I don't think it would qualify as hypercorrection, do you?), and has any sort of list ever been compiled?

Marc Picard
LL Issue: 10.107
Date posted: 25-Jan-1999



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