Noncompositional

As far as eggcorns go, I admit that this is a stretch. In fact, it probably isn’t one at all. It’s probably better analyzed as some sort of idiom blend between formal aspects of “take X for granted” and meaningful aspects of “take advantage of X”. I first heard this while listening to parts of the Switchboard corpus, but in that case the speaker corrected himself.

A: It’s interesting, I really hadn’t given any thought at all to things like buttons and seams, but I guess I’ve just begun to take that for advantage that buttons are not going to be sewn on, I mean, took that for granted that buttons are not going to be sewn on very well.

A google search reveals a small number of attestations (below). These all seem to be paraphrasable with “take X for granted,” but with the restriction that what you are taking for granted is something positive, and something which “gives you an advantage” or which could potentially be (improperly) taken advantage of. Compare this with the possibility, probably only available in formal writing, of “take X for granted” meaning “assume” (e.g., From here on I will take it for granted that {Bi: i in I} is a partition, and rely on this in statement and proof of results.)

The big issue is that “granted” and “advantage” really don’t sound alike, except for the rhyme of the stressed syllable and following bit of the next syllable ([ant@]).

Put the energy to good use, but don’t take it for advantage and push the horse too hard too fast. (link)

Brandy: It’s pretty good. Some schools should have it because people talk a lot about people. I’m not sure exactly why but maybe if someone got to understand what someone else was going through every now and then, they wouldn’t take it for advantage but they would try to understand a person and actually reach out to them instead of hurt them. (link)

Always willing to lend a helping hand but dislike those who take it for advantage (link)

this movie is so awesome it makes me think how good we all have it and take it for advantage i like it even though it ends differently than the book its still way cool and all philosophical like ([link(http://www.gnovies.com/discussion/fight+club.html))

What a wonderful gift God has given to us and we take it for advantage everyday (link)

Treasure your friends and do not take them for advantage. (link)

Consider what are likely values for X in the phrasal template (nascent snowclone?) I X and I vote. Such a declaration is commonly seen on bumper stickers and sometimes in the windows of people’s places of residence. In my experience (at least the experience that I think I can recall), it’s most commonly I own a gun and I vote and I’m in the NRA and I vote. But that could just be because a house near where I used to live had such a sign up in his or her window. I briefly considered that this was more of a right-wing thing to say. But if you search on google you’ll find slogans like I’m Indian, I game and I vote, I have a dog and I vote, and I’m undead and I vote, none of which really leads one to believe that the voter in question leans one way or the other politically. Well, maybe the last one…

Let it be known that other(s) have noted and commented on this pattern, including this criticism. Others seem to be aware of the template and modify it consciously.

In any case, it seems that the non-humorous ones tend at least to be proclaiming that the person holds some fringe (I’m Pagan and I vote) or at least controversial (I’m Pro-Choice and I vote) stance. What’s interesting is what you can tell about a person from the bumper sticker beyond the two stated facts.

Okay, so I really have only one case in mind, and that’s the following bumper sticker I saw recently in Berkeley. I don’t recall the sort of car it was on, but the sticker was green, and it read

I eat tofu and I vote.

Given the connection in the West (or at least California) between tofu and vegetarianism/veganism, and (thereby?) with environmentalism, and in general progressive attitudes, I read this as a statement of progressive, or possibly just tree-hugger values. But for what class of people could you draw such a connection? And here’s where the issue of the significance of tofu-eating comes in. There are people for whom tofu eating is nothing special, myself included, but nonetheless there is at least for some people (again, myself included) a recognition of the indexicality of tofu, especially (or exclusively) among people for whom tofu is something quite special. And it is this latter group’s recognition of the specialness of tofu that lets one understand the significance of the bumper sticker. Of course it’s not so simple as all that - it’s not necessarily just about individuals who happen to eat tofu, but the historical context in which they eat it. The grown child of an immigrant from a tofu-eating nation might feel just as home with tofu as the grown child of people raised in a tofu-is-new culture. Nonetheless, the social significance of eating tofu, or at least the recognition of a historical significance, might somehow persist in the later generation, such that the driver of that car might have dietary habits observably no different from (say) mine, though it would be entirely misleading (in intent, though not in literal meaning) to put that bumper sticker on my own car.

On the other hand, if a bumper sticker were to read I eat rice and I vote we would have a rather different situation.

Anyone who’s spent any time reading the blog (or the scholarly work) of Neal Whitman knows that English has a whole bunch of messed up coordinate structures. My personal favorite is friends in low places, aka Right-node wrapping. But also up there is the combination of quotative inversion and coordination. For instance:

“No problem,” said the stewardess and promptly dropped a second tray of food onto my foldout table, without taking away the original one. link

The interesting thing being that the stewardess, who is the one doing the saying, after the verb due to a particular narrative convention, but nonetheless acts as the subject of the sentence with respect to the coordination: the stewardess is also the one who dropped the second tray of food.

If you’ve been thinking about the title of this post, you’ll probably see what I’m getting at. The same sort of issue arises with so-called locative inversion, as in:

down came the rain and washed the spider out

out came the sun and dried up all the rain

I have to admit that I find quotative inversion plus coordination to sound strange, and outside of this particular nursery rhyme, I think I’d find locative inversion equally jarring. But there it is.

How do you describe a cow that’s rather pessimistically chowing down on grass in a meadow?

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Just a few random thoughts as I was reading over something I wrote.

Out of context, something like “he’s a speaker” makes no sense, or at least requires a bunch more imagination to make sense of it. Could be that “speaker” is a title (like, “of the house”), but barring that, it’s really quite different from something like “he’s a swimmer.” Probably because we usually expect people to speak, but not necessarily to swim (but again, that can’t be quite right, because we usually expect people to be able to run, but “she’s a runner” is fine as a way to introduce someone, but “she’s a walker” is not. Maybe because “he’s a swimmer” (and “she’s a runner”) usually means that s/he swims/runs professionally, or at least competitively. Can you say “he’s a speaker” to mean his profession is giving speeches and lectures? Seems odd at best If you add an informative adjective like “traveling” or “political” maybe it improves).

But then consider what happens with certain adjectives:

She’s a good speaker.

Here, she’s probably an orator or speech-giver. Plausible as part of an introductory description of someone. (”You should meet Sue. She’s a great speaker.” But strange: “…She’s a speaker.”)

She’s a native speaker.

This is interesting, because this requires a context where the addressee can figure out what language “she” is a native speaker of. In fact, in this usage, speaker has an optional PP-of complement (”she is a native speaker of Japanese”). Not so for “she’s a good speaker”. We don’t say (usually) that someone is “a good speaker of lectures/speeches/addresses/…”.

At the beginning of the Double Jeopardy! round of today’s Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek noted to one contestant, “Robin, I see red on you and red in front of you: let’s try to get rid of one of those this round.”

Robin had a negative score, and was wearing a red shirt. Thank goodness for specific indefinites.

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