zompist bboard

It's not atypical either. Maybe it's American? Me and AnTeallach are the ones saying it's okay and we're both from the UK. I don't use 'head of lettuce' at all either, and it sounds silly and redundant.

Yeah, my impression has always been that "lettuce" as a count noun is BE.

Everyone has "cabbage" as both a count and mass noun, isn't it?

Jetboy wrote:

Astraios wrote: I'd expect /ɪ.ˈzn̩t/ if it was in the context of: "Did you say 'it is red'?" "No, I said 'it isn't red'", but not normally elsewhere.

The thing is, though, I'd still give <isn't> initial stress– stronger initial stress, but still initial stress. Or maybe "it's not"; that's not terribly likely (or maybe it is), but definitely sounds less awkward than the wholly uncontracted one.

It might just be a formatting error, but it also works for me as a matter of writing that doesn't transfer over to speech. It fits a scenario where someone says,

• You quoted me as saying "it is red", but actually I wrote "it isn't red." Note the three bolded characters that managed to dissapear from your version of my statement.

Here, the spoken equivalent is still [ˈɪzn̩t] and the bolding used to emphasize the written difference.

linguoboy wrote:Yeah, my impression has always been that "lettuce" as a count noun is BE.

Everyone has "cabbage" as both a count and mass noun, isn't it?

Right, to me cabbage can be both, so a cabbage is grammatical to me, even though *a lettuce is not.

I wouldn't say "a lettuce" either. However, I think I think "a lettuce" may be sort of acceptable, if, as I said, the portions are available and obvious.

For example, you are making sandwiches, and you have all the ingredients on plates on the table ready to be assembled, including lettuce leaves torn up into the right sizes to fit on the bread. If someone at that point asked "Can you pass me a lettuce?" I wouldn't find it so strange, though I probably wouldn't say it myself. But outside of some very specific situation like that, I don't think "a lettuce" makes much sense.

Lettuce is always a mass noun to me.

I have realized that in my normal speech "to swim" has become a fully regular weak verb; swim-swimmed.

I recently ran across "have an inspiration" in a novel, meaning what I would phrase as "be struck by inspiration." Perhaps it's on analogy with "have an idea."

Talking about someone's career path a couple days ago, my aunt said of a young woman "she student-teached there for four years".

Jetboy wrote:I recently ran across "have an inspiration" in a novel, meaning what I would phrase as "be struck by inspiration." Perhaps it's on analogy with "have an idea."

Was that by any chance a translated novel? The equivalent construction "eine Eingebung haben" is quite usual in German.

[ˈkriˌkreɪ] meaning "crazy"

linguoboy wrote:Talking about someone's career path a couple days ago, my aunt said of a young woman "she student-teached there for four years".

I do not recall exactly where, but I am quite sure I have heard that form or related forms (such as student-teaching) being used before myself.

Bob Johnson wrote:[ˈkriˌkreɪ] meaning "crazy"

Isn't that something teenage girls do?

Theta wrote:

Bob Johnson wrote:[ˈkriˌkreɪ] meaning "crazy"

Isn't that something teenage girls do?

a teenage girl might be a better source to ask

on repetition it turned out to be [ˈkreɪˌkreɪ] making it somewhat less interesting

Someone I know commenting on a picture:

This is literally me. It's a metaphor.

Solarius wrote:This is literally me. It's a metaphor.

Meaning, I suppose, "I feel strongly identified with this".

treegod wrote:

Solarius wrote:This is literally me. It's a metaphor.

Meaning, I suppose, "I feel strongly identified with this".

No, it means "it's not a youtaphor".

"He should have taken it and rollen it out." -my sister in response to a cooking show

(Is this the right thread for this? It was the first relevant one I saw when going down the list, so eh.)

TaylorS wrote:I have realized that in my normal speech "to swim" has become a fully regular weak verb; swim-swimmed.

I use swam. But for some reason I find 'swum' awkward, so I always avoid it, instead saying "gone swimming" or finding some other way to rephrase it so I don't need to use "swum". Same with "drunk", I'll say "had a drink" or something like that. I also don't really like using "lay" as the past tense of "lie" when I'm speaking.

swim-swam for me. Yes, just realised "swum" is a bit awkward for me too, and I use "gone simming".

Same with "drunk", I'll say "had a drink" or something like that.

I drank? I have drunk? Both quite okay for me. I say "had a drink" too.

I also don't really like using "lay" as the past tense of "lie" when I'm speaking.

I use "layed". Strange, "lay", for me is still present tense, as in "I lay on this sofa", Which could be narrative or describing a usual habit.

In standard English, lie and lay are two different verbs, but lay is also the irregular past tense of lie. But in most dialects of English – especially in America, where it's the bugbear of prescriptivists – the distinction is eroding. I can't quite remember what it is offhand, something to do with volition or transitivity. That said, I think the distinction is still fairly intact in my dialect, and I can only readily interpret that sentence as a past tense.

finlay wrote:In standard English, lie and lay are two different verbs, but lay is also the irregular past tense of lie. But in most dialects of English – especially in America, where it's the bugbear of prescriptivists – the distinction is eroding. I can't quite remember what it is offhand, something to do with volition or transitivity.

Wut? It's just a standard causative distinction with some typical semantic expansion of the two independently.

lay / laid / laid (put something in place - transitive):
- lay tile
- laid the foundations
- "One thing we might get out of Cyrus's little get together is meeting some strange wool. I wouldn't mind laying a little something down on the way back." -The Warriors

lie / lay / lain (recline - intransitive):
- lie down
- "In the distance three lions lay in wait for hours. The zebra made the mistake of scratching its wound against a bush" -random website
- "This is what you shall do: every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall devote to destruction." -Judges 21:11, ESV

lie / lied / lied (tell a falsehood):
- lie to someone
- "You lied to me, even though you know I'd die for you" -Mark Morrison, "Return of the Mack"

treegod wrote:I drank? I have drunk? Both quite okay for me. I say "had a drink" too.

I don't mind drank, but I don't like drunk as a past participle. "I've drunk this medicine every day and still no change!" don't like it. I probably associate "drunk" too strongly with the adjective.

My linguistics teacher from America said that "drunk" as a pp was alien to him. There might be something there. I'm pretty sure I normally say "I've drank", but then I'm also prone to other non-standard collapsing of pp and past simple, such as "I seen" or "I've went".

I also keep noticing myself using "yous" recently.

To put it basically (i.e. without grammatical expl.) "lie" is what I do with my body and "lay" is what I do with other things. Thanks, you learn something new every day.

clawgrip wrote: I don't mind drank, but I don't like drunk as a past participle. "I've drunk this medicine every day and still no change!" don't like it. I probably associate "drunk" too strongly with the adjective.

"I'm drunk", "I got drunk", "I have been drunk".