The Innovative Usage Thread

[Viktor77]

I'm torn between Finlay and Sumeric here. I can't tell if veritable just sounds more educated, more stressed, or if it carries a unique meaning, something more tangible than pragmatics. I'm going to have to think on it.

If I may, I had another construction come up in my speech that intrigued me. During a heated argument I wrote: "So did I think that everything was fine." This has something to do with the 'so did I' or 'as did I' phrases we use. This intrigues me because it seems to exhibit typical Germanic SV->VS alteration in statements, something that I can't say I was aware we were doing in English. Perhaps you know of other cases where English flips the subject and verb in non-interrogative statements? Without sounding poetic of course.

[finlay]

We have dying subjunctive forms like "Should you be interested, please inform your supervisor".

We also have forms like "Never have I seen such a thing", "Never before did I consider the possibility that .." - I wouldn't call this innovative or generally applicable, but it still exists. It's restricted to auxiliaries of course, unlike the German version.

[KathTheDragon]

"So did I think that everything was fine."

What's the intended meaning there? I'm having trouble parsing it as anything other than a question.

[Neon Fox]

"So did I think that everything was fine."

What's the intended meaning there? I'm having trouble parsing it as anything other than a question.

I assume he's using "so" in the old-fashioned sense of "thus".

[KathTheDragon]

Ah

[linguoboy]

Recently while perusing a Wikipedia article on the Got Talent franchise (don't ask), I came across the phrase "Franchise that's status in [sic] unknown". It took me a while to parse this, but I guess that's is a possessive relative pronoun formed by analogy with whose. It sounds quite natural to me, so I suspect I've used it before without thinking about it, but I don't recall ever before having seeing it written.

[Zaarin]

Recently while perusing a Wikipedia article on the Got Talent franchise (don't ask), I came across the phrase "Franchise that's status in [sic] unknown". It took me a while to parse this, but I guess that's is a possessive relative pronoun formed by analogy with whose. It sounds quite natural to me, so I suspect I've used it before without thinking about it, but I don't recall ever before having seeing it written.

That sounds absolutely awful to me; I would have used "whose" or reworded. >_<

[Magb]

Recently while perusing a Wikipedia article on the Got Talent franchise (don't ask), I came across the phrase "Franchise that's status in [sic] unknown". It took me a while to parse this, but I guess that's is a possessive relative pronoun formed by analogy with whose. It sounds quite natural to me, so I suspect I've used it before without thinking about it, but I don't recall ever before having seeing it written.

That sounds absolutely awful to me; I would have used "whose" or reworded. >_<

No doubt most people would, but the word who and its derived forms are pretty strongly associated with animate referents these days, so it makes sense that some people look for an alternative involving that or which when the referent is inanimate.

It's similar to why the old Lord's Prayer opening line "Our Father, which art in heaven" sounds so jarring nowadays.

[Zaarin]

Recently while perusing a Wikipedia article on the Got Talent franchise (don't ask), I came across the phrase "Franchise that's status in [sic] unknown". It took me a while to parse this, but I guess that's is a possessive relative pronoun formed by analogy with whose. It sounds quite natural to me, so I suspect I've used it before without thinking about it, but I don't recall ever before having seeing it written.

That sounds absolutely awful to me; I would have used "whose" or reworded. >_<

No doubt most people would, but the word who and its derived forms are pretty strongly associated with animate referents these days, so it makes sense that some people look for an alternative involving that or which when the referent is inanimate.

It's similar to why the old Lord's Prayer opening line "Our Father, which art in heaven" sounds so jarring nowadays.

True enough. I guess I most strongly associate which with inanimacy and who with animacy, but I'm more comfortable using who with an inanimate than which with an animate.

[Viktor77]

Does anyone else find "He's got" perfectly natural and acceptable, but the uncontracted form "He has got" to be a bit off?

He's got 10 points.
He has got 10 points.

Could be some frequency effect.

[Yng]

In that context yes, because uncontracted forms are only used colloquially for emphasis, and there's no emphasis there. In this exchange it's perfectly natural though:

Has he got a house?
No, but he HAS got a car.

Formally of course contracted forms are perfectly acceptable - but I wouldn't use 'have got' in writing, I don't think.

[Neon Fox]

Formally of course contracted forms are perfectly acceptable - but I wouldn't use 'have got' in writing, I don't think.

Whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim gun, and they have not.

Granted, that was more than a hundred years ago.

[linguoboy]

"satisfice"

Thought this was a recent blend, turns out it's a bit of jargon that's already more than a half-century old.

[Salmoneus]

"satisfice"

Thought this was a recent blend, turns out it's a bit of jargon that's already more than a half-century old.

From a PPE student: yeah, they've been using that one a long while.

[linguoboy]

Has anyone encountred this usage of "cookbook" before? (The speaker is a seafood farmer in Washington State):

"Geoduck is our newest species and it took us a long time - about a decade, just to get to a point where we weren't throwing money away," says Dewey. "It's still not a cookbook today but it's profitable.

[Bristel]

^That usage seems non-standard to me, but I think you can use nouns in that way.

When you had a to learn a song about geoduck in elementary school, you'd suspected that geoduck would be a cookbook too, but nay, I haven't seen much geoduck in American restaurants.

[linguoboy]

Intrusive L!

Today I said that gargling with mouthwash "only makes my throat rawler".

[Porphyrogenitos]

Ah, I have "bolth" for "both". I wonder if that's some kind of hypercorrection, since I have /l/ in a lot of words that historically lost it, such as palm and balm. (But not all - I don't have /l/ in "folk", for example.)

[linguoboy]

Ah, I have "bolth" for "both". I wonder if that's some kind of hypercorrection, since I have /l/ in a lot of words that historically lost it, such as palm and balm. (But not all - I don't have /l/ in "folk", for example.)

Bolth has been around for years. It probably originated as a hypercorrection, but I've never had it in my speech.

I really have to think about what words with the rhyme TALK or FOLK have [ɫ] in my speech. For years, I wasn't even aware I was deleting it. (Or, rather, never had it.) But I don't generally drop it in word-final position, so it was startling to hear myself restore it by false analogy.

[ol bofosh]

I say words like stalk, walk, talk and they have permanent l-vocalisation, so stalk and stork ar split. But they never recover the /l/.

[Travis B.]

I have permanent l-loss, with vowel quality changes, in just about all the typical words it is found in in English except calm, palm, and falcon. Note that this is distinguished from my native l-vocalization, which is applied to almost all cases of /l/ aside from word-initially, stressed syllable-initially, or when geminate. Hence when I pronounce calm as [kʰɒ̃(ː)õ̯m] this reflects an underlying /kɔlm/, which is a spelling pronunciation. (Note that not all people who speak roughly the same variety as me have this, e.g. my father pronounces calm as [kʰã(ː)m], reflecting an underlying /kɑm/.) This contrasts with my pronouncing talk as [tʰɒʔk], which reflects an underlying /tɔk/, which is not a spelling pronunciation.

[Zaarin]

(But not all - I don't have /l/ in "folk", for example.)

I actually have a weird split there. When referring to the genre of music, I (often but not always) have [fɔlk], but in all other contexts I have [foʊ̯k].

[linguoboy]

(But not all - I don't have /l/ in "folk", for example.)

I actually have a weird split there. When referring to the genre of music, I (often but not always) have [fɔlk], but in all other contexts I have [foʊ̯k].

Holy crap, I think I might have that, too (mutatis mutandis).

I would assume this is because "folk music" is a term I most often hear from more punctilious speakers (like NPR radio personalities).

[gmalivuk]

Sometimes I say 'another X than Y' instead of 'another X from Y'

Possibly thanks to "other than", the first sounds far more natural to me, to the point where I'd probably correct the latter if I found I'd used it in writing.

(Without doing any actual research, I do know "there are other worlds than these" is attested at least as far back as 1982.)

[din]

(But not all - I don't have /l/ in "folk", for example.)

I actually have a weird split there. When referring to the genre of music, I (often but not always) have [fɔlk], but in all other contexts I have [foʊ̯k].

Holy crap, I think I might have that, too (mutatis mutandis).

I would assume this is because "folk music" is a term I most often hear from more punctilious speakers (like NPR radio personalities).

A while ago I also came to the realization that I do this, but I just concluded I was being weird. Good to know I'm not alone