Noncompositional

So, you know the old (?) ABC (?) Saturday morning cartoon jingle: “After these messages, we’ll be right back.” Well, back when I was in first grade or whenever it was that I remember them from, I thought, “Why do they have it in the wrong order?! Shouldn’t it be ‘We’ll be right back after these messages’?”

In my more advanced age, I had a rather different reaction to the Target Christmas commercial with a bunch of elementary school students reciting, “There’s no place like Target / at Christmas to save.” Since it’s in verse, the order isn’t so exceptional. What’s interesting is trying to figure out the semantic parse — and if any of the various parses actually means anything different from any of the others. What’s clear, I think, is that to save is an infinitival relative modifying place. What’s up for grabs, I suppose, is whether at Christmas hooks up with save or with be, and if like Target modifies place, place to save, or place to save at Christmas. I think basically all of these mean about or exactly the same thing.

Also cool: the phrase at Christmas. Generally at prefers point-like times and/or events, or times that are metonymic for events. So at 4 o’clock and at Burning Man are okay, but at Tuesday is bad. It seems like at [holiday] generally works, but it seems more natural with post-September holidays: Chirstmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween…uh, and New Year’s Day (yeah, that’s post-September). Anyway, the Target commercial also clearly doesn’t mean “on Christmas Day”, since they presumably wish you to save in the weeks leading up as well. Not sure how general this gets (could be for purposes of meter, it’s “Christmas” rather than “Christmas time/season/etc”).

Also, I think I hope it doesn’t rain at my birthday is strange, unless my birthday stands for some event being held for the birthday. On the other hand, it never rains at Christmas/Thanksgiving seems basically normal. And someone could say that even if they never do anything special on those days.