The Innovative Usage Thread

[salem]

I've used "whyd's" and "whered's" as contractions of "why does" and "where does" before.

[linguoboy]

"Some of the ideas that we had was..."

Curious whether this was a hypercorrection (trying to avoid being misled by the plurality of "ideas") or a further generalisation of singular agreement in presentational constructions in line with invariable "There's..."

[CaesarVincens]

I'd guess closer to the second. Distance between syntactic subject and verb helps to break agreement in my experience.

[Yng]

do we have to pretend every production error ever made by an english speaker is an innovation

I mean maybe you hear this consistently in dialects which do not have were~was rolled into one consistent conjugation but I know I certainly make this error occasionally and it is very much an error caused by, as caesarvincens says, distance between subject and verb

[Matrix]

do we have to pretend every production error ever made by an english speaker is an innovation

Seems to me that, in a comparison between linguistic and biological evolution, production errors would be analogous to mutation. People choosing ones they think are interesting/useful and propagating them would be the selective aspect.

[jmcd]

Yeah but they're sometimes century-old, sometimes older than the standard variant.

[Yng]

do we have to pretend every production error ever made by an english speaker is an innovation

Seems to me that, in a comparison between linguistic and biological evolution, production errors would be analogous to mutation. People choosing ones they think are interesting/useful and propagating them would be the selective aspect.

KIND OF but not really - there's definitely a difference between production errors which are one-off accidents and "production errors" (if we can call them that) which are relatively consistent examples of a new feature finding its way into the language. The development of innovations is obviously an ill-understood process, but I don't think we can call one accidental agreement error which the speaker themselves would probably take issue with if they heard it an ~~~innovation in the making~~~

[ol bofosh]

But if their well-established unsual constructions, then there's nothing very innovative about them, is there?

Unless they're something that's become very recently fashionable, I suppose.

Most of what I hear and share hear are production errors of Spanish speakers. Innovative, because they're unusual for most if not all native English speakers. I feel like I'm listening to the start of an Iberian dialect of English.
Sometime I say something accidentally and, if it's construction is interesting enough, I'd share it here. But not every production mistake is interesting, it's just a jumble.

By the by, has anyone considered using this thread to construct a future English?

[Kereb]

"to gó off the board" = to stick closely to what is indicated in the storyboard

"to go óff the board" = to deviate from what is indicated in the storyboard

[KathTheDragon]

*Remembers the thread about phonemic stress.*

[Kereb]

Yeah I saw that one too. I thought the grounds on which Sal dismissed the large number of noun-verb pairs distinguished only by stress was silly. As Zompist says, it's bringing syntax in to a place where it just doesn't seem to apply (one other case in which this was used to dismiss the phonemic status of anything would have been useful to see, but ah well)

There's a large group of them in re-. And while the rule isn't one hundred percent productive, it seems to easily get analogised to verbs in re-.
And it's been analogised to other cases, even ones in which the pair isn't noun/verb. You can get charged with impáired driving and later tell your friends that the cop "gave me an ímpaired."

[Melteor]

"to gó off the board" = to stick closely to what is indicated in the storyboard

I don't know when it happened but I have "to go off" as a variation on "to go by", maybe "to go on"; it probably popped up the same time "to base off" came around as a variation on "to base on" I'm guessing because of the innovated use of "off".

"to go óff the board" = to deviate from what is indicated in the storyboard

I am guessing this is an innovation on an idiom like "to go off track" or "to go off the rails".

In both cases it might be more subtle than you think since one is effectively a fixed phrase being made to perhaps ironically match the circumstances, i.e. deviating from the 'boards being literally compared to going off track, and in the other case an informal idiom. In the case of the second I would think there would be one main "nuclear" stress would go on the first part of the verbal phrase and the accent on "boards" would be suppressed in the tail, while in the first the nuclear accent would probably be on "boards".

In Frisian I think this would be a good place for noun incorporation to happen, whenever the noun becomes a part of an idiom e.g. "I am tobacco-smoking"="I am smoking [some] tobacco" vs. "I am smoking the tobacco".

[Astraios]

I don't really know if it's innovative or if I'm just losing my ability to grammar, but recently I've been muddling up 'is' [ɪz] and 'has' [az] when they're auxiliary verbs, and I guess it could be because negative 'isn't' and 'haven't' are homophonously [ɪn(t)].

[linguoboy]

I don't really know if it's innovative or if I'm just losing my ability to grammar, but recently I've been muddling up 'is' [ɪz] and 'has' [az] when they're auxiliary verbs, and I guess it could be because negative 'isn't' and 'haven't' are homophonously [ɪn(t)].

Don't you also have [z] for the cliticised form of both of them? I can see how if that's your default, expanding it could get tricky.

I recently saw "full backal nudity" by analogy with "full frontal nudity". I thought it was a nonce word, but there's actually an entry in Wiktionary documenting its appearance at least fourteen years ago. It took me a while to think what a proper alternative would be.

[Astraios]

Don't you also have [z] for the cliticised form of both of them? I can see how if that's your default, expanding it could get tricky.

That's true too. I don't really understand though because it's only happened recently. My accent has recently become a lot more nonstandard though and I'm slipping into local things like [ən] for -ing, so it could be part of that as well.

[ol bofosh]

I sometimes get them mixed up, probably through influence of the cliticised form. "Where is it gone?" instead of "where has it gone?" for example. But not normally to people, only when I'm mumbling to myself, which I often do when I lose something.

[2+3 clusivity]

This probably isn't very innovative, but I recently noticed this:

<let us> can mean either (1) "let the speaker and the listener (and possibly others)," or (2) "let the speaker and a non-speech act participant but not the listener."

I.e. (1) "As for you and I, let us go to the park!" and (2) "As for my brother and I, let us go to the park!"

<let's> can mean either "let the speaker and the listener (and possibly others)," but cannot, at least for me, mean "let the speaker and a non-speech act participant but not the listener."

(1) "As for you and I, let's go to the park." (2) *"As for my brother and I, let's go to the park"

[Yng]

no that is probably very long-established

But also: in speech, 'let us' and 'let's' are very distinct, with the latter being a single word ('let us' = permit us, 'let's' = cohortative). 'let us' can only mean 'let's' in very weird, archaising contexts.

[finlay]

You're right, if I hear let us to mean let's, I think of our school chaplain saying things like "let us pray". Not normal spoken language.

[linguoboy]

But also: in speech, 'let us' and 'let's' are very distinct, with the latter being a single word ('let us' = permit us, 'let's' = cohortative). 'let us' can only mean 'let's' in very weird, archaising contexts.

The only time I really used it growing up was when reading petitions aloud in church services. You concluded each one with, "Let us pray to the Lord". (And the nuns exhorted us not to slur this as "Lettuce pray...")

[KathTheDragon]

"Lettuce pray..."

My family at least has an in-joke where we will replace "let's" with "cabbage", as "let's" sounds like "let us" sounds like "lettuce", which is similar to a cabbage.

[----]

Not the usual format for posts in this thread, but how long has the phrase "believe in" meant "ideologically support"? e.g. "I believe in abortion" --> "I think abortion is morally acceptable" as opposed to the typical meaning like "I believe in God"

[jal]

"I believe in abortion" --> "I think abortion is morally acceptable"

I'd say that "I believe in abortion" would mean "I think that abortion is a good solution to the problem", not that it is "morally acceptable", cf. "I believe in a win-win solution" or "I believe in the President" etc.

as opposed to the typical meaning like "I believe in God"

Wouldn't that (i.e. religious believe) always have been the seconday meaning i/o the first?


JAL

[----]

"I believe in abortion" --> "I think abortion is morally acceptable"

I'd say that "I believe in abortion" would mean "I think that abortion is a good solution to the problem", not that it is "morally acceptable", cf. (1) "I believe in a win-win solution" or (2) "I believe in the President" etc.

I don't think it means that, but I'm not sure the distinction between "morally acceptable" and "a good idea" is valuable to my question anyway. In any case, neither of (1) or (2) appear to be the same sense as the abortion example. (1) seems to be the sense of saying that something exists, and (2) is a different idea still. The most likely interpretation of "I believe in the President" is "I have confidence in the President."

as opposed to the typical meaning like "I believe in God"

Wouldn't that (i.e. religious believe) always have been the seconday meaning i/o the first?

I don't think so. It certainly appears to be the most primary sense to me, and to many people who denigrate the usage I described in my question.

[jal]

Well, instead of making up the finer meaning of "believe", let's go to an authorative source:

intransitive verb

1. 1. to have a firm religious faith
   2. to accept something as true, genuine, or real <ideals we believe in> <believes in ghosts>
2. to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something <believe in exercise>
3. to hold an opinion : think <I believe so>

transitive verb

1. 1. to consider to be true or honest <believe the reports> <you wouldn't believe how long it took>
   2. to accept the word or evidence of <I believe you> <couldn't believe my ears>
2. to hold as an opinion : suppose <I believe it will rain soon>

So my (1) and (2) are 2 above, and your god-believe is 1a above. It seems the "ideologically support" hasn't made it in the dictionary yet, if it actually exists.


JAL