Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, dirk elzinga wrote:

> People look at me funny when I use it, which I do
> often to great effect; it puts people off their guard--after
> all, you wouldn't expect a linguistics PhD to talk like *that*,
> now would you? :-)
Northrop Frye, the Canadian literary critic, told a story of going into
a hardware store and asking for something or other.  The clerk replied,
"We haven't got any", which he swiftly corrected to "We haven't got none."
> Frye said (later) that the latter remark was superior, possessing a greater
degree of "what we literary critics call 'texture'": it meant
1) We haven't got any, and 2) You look to me like a schoolteacher,
and nobody's going to catch me talking like one of them.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
        "You need a change: try Canada"  "You need a change: try China"
                --fortune cookies opened by a couple that I know