mrschili
June 14, 2007 at 6:01 am
I think I’ve covered “it’s and its” more than any other words I’ve investigated here; it’s a problem spot for Blue. I’ve been trying to get her to start thinking of the apostrophe as the dot for the missing “i,” but I don’t think she’s buyin’ it.
I’ve not done “witch and which” yet, but I know I’ve done “whether and weather”…
A hearse, huh? Well, it’d certainly be easy to spot in the parking lot!
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27 Comments.
Jangari
June 6, 2007 at 6:31 pm
When I was reading this I was thinking of that part of The Language Instinct that the Language Log post quotes, which is good, it means I don’t have to get my copy and re-type the section out. The crucial part is that the intonation of I could care less differs from I couldn’t care less . The stress in the former is on care while in the latter it is on couldn’t . If I could care less was to be taken literally, as opposed to sarcastically, it’d be I could care less .
As far as different than/from goes, I’d have to weigh in and say that different is one of those weird predicates that takes a complement inside a prepositional phrase just because otherwise the object would be too close to the predicate, rather than there being any real meaning conveyed by the preposition, like in true intransitives.
So, a true intransitive, like run (ignoring run a race ), differs in meaning depending on the preposition that heads the complement. Run to the house is therefore different from run from the house . But predicates like ‘different’, ‘dependent’, ‘consist’, ‘with regard’, do not rely on the preposition to convey the correct meaning, but they still require one. You can’t say that dog is different this dog . As a result of the mere token requirement of a preposition, it matters less which preposition you pick.
With regard for/to/?of
consisting in/of
If you’ve ever tried learning French, Italian, Spanish etc., you might recall the difficulty in memorising which prepositions go with which predicates. I had to remember that you say dependere da as opposed to dependere su which is what I would have expected if I’d translated straight from English.
I still sometimes have to ask is something comprised of or comprised by ?
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