Re: USAGE: Survey

> Okay, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but need some
> data.  I was attending Richie Kayne's class today at the LSA
:: makes note beside name in record book ::

>   (1)  It was lightning out last night.  OR
>   (2)  It was lightninging out last night.
>
> In my dialect, I can only get (1).
I hear and have heard #1 all my life, whether in the piedmont of South
Carolina, in Chicago, in Phoenix or in Seattle. On hearing #2, I wonder if
the speaker is trying to be humorous, similarly to "cute" children saying "I
goed to school." or "I readed the book."

> (Kayne has this rather controversial theory that there are in
> fact only a very limited number of verbs in English, such as
> "do", "make", etc. which are all light verbs.  Anything else
> that looks like a verb is actually a noun which has been
> incorporated with a null light verb. I think this is nonsense,
> but nonsense is how you get tenure...)
Interesting. I considered this idea and abandoned it when I was a university
freshman in 1973.

> Also, does anyone happen to know of any language where an
> idiom has significantly different syntax from the rest of
> the language?  Specifically, it would be nice to know, say,
> if there are languages with idioms where the article follows
> the noun rather than preceding it as normal.
Sorry, not something which I've ever even contemplated re: natlangs.

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