Noncompositional

In a recent languagelog post, Mark Liberman, discusses briefly two orthographic contractions, tryna (= trying to) and finna (= fixing to). He wonders,

I wonder why “gonna” and “wanna” have been standard non-standard orthography for so long, while “tryna” has lagged? Is it because the contraction is newer — you couldn’t prove that by me, I’ve used all of them from the cradle — or because “tryna” is just orthographically weirder?

I’d have to guess that a combination of orthorgraphic oddness and frequency are to blame for the nonproliferation of tryna (dialectal factors playing a larger role, perhaps, with finna). Google reports around 3 million hits for “want to” and 1 million for “going to,” which went way against my expectations. The BNC, on the other hand, has more even numbers, with “want to” at around 29000″ and “going to” at 34000. Even including all the inflectional variants of want only gets you about 45000 results. “Trying to,” on the other hand, gives around 90 million ghits and 16000 BNC hits. Corpus linguists and statisticians can figure out what, if anything, that means anything with respect to frequency, phonological reduction, and grammaticalization.

And speaking of grammaticalization, I did what I am often wont to do: I searched for fun combinations of “tryna” in google. Some highlights:

• why is bush actin like he tryna gonna get osama?
• i know one of you internet thugz gonna tryna to argue wit me
• soon or later you might tryna eat my legs
• lame attempt at tryna be funny

Ah, it’s beautiful. And as a side note, I stumbled upon an absolutely hilarious (and somewhat wrong (in the “shouldn’t really exist” sense)) way of writing forum: 4orum. Dude.

Isn’t English great? I can take an verb that denotes an event involving an agent and a patient, and make a de-verbal adjectival compound by sticking the agent onto the beginning of the verb and an -ed on the end (if this is a “state resulting from an event” type of word). The new creation can then modify (or be predicated of) the patient. Thus, war-devastated nations, time-honored traditions, and kid-tested-mother-approved morning cereals. These construction-licenced adjectives are certainly linguist-appreciated. I’m sure they’ve been scholar-mentioned in content-publishing journals or student-used textbooks. At the very least, they’ve now been blogger-considered. And of course, there are other possibilities for the glommed-on parts. There are regularly-scheduled programs, and often-missed must-see TV (though if you aren’t aware of the scheduling, it’s probably must-seen TV more often than not). Though when all it is is more pundit-spun war-tearing and time-honoring, maybe missing it is understandable.

Anyway, I’d better watch out, before I incorporation-infest this entry. Though, I must admit, I do verb-like object-incorporating ones.

Recently Citibank has been showcasing its identity theft services for their checking/savings/whatever accounts, and show the dangers of not having protection by showing normal, everyday-seeming people sitting in their homes, speaking to to the camera. Only it’s not their voice, it’s the voice of whoever “stole” their identity (ah, the power of metaphor) describing their purchasing adventures. In one particular commercial, a man sits on a chair in his living room near a table, and a fashion-conscience valley girl talks about how she emptied his checking account and went on a shopping spree. Now, in this commercial (and in others), there is very little body movement - the victim is sitting down, not gesturing wildly. All this contrary to how we might imagine the identity thief gesturing as she speaks very emphatically about her exploits. Well, that’s fine. I suppose the victim is depressed, downtrodden, and lethargic after having been taken for a ride by some scrupulous fraud.

But wait - in the commercial featuring the man, the woman thief talks about stealing a $1500 leather bustier that “lifts and separates.” While she notes this pair of features, the man makes cups with his hands, places them at chest-level, and makes a “lifting and separating” gesture. At around the same time, or slightly after, the man reaches for a can of fizzy beverage in a can-cooler and cracks it open. So what’s going on? There are several factors: is the man aware that someone has stolen his identity? Is he aware of who it is? (i.e., woman buying clothing items) Is the theft, who is detailing her crime, possessing the victim in body as well as in digital identification? If so, how much?

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