substituting (was Re: Gay lisp)

From: Arnold Zwicky (zwicky_at_Turing.Stanford.EDU)
Date: 12/08/04 

Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 22:12:23 +0000 (UTC)

in article <41B72D98.1E7B@worldnet.att.net>, peter daniels
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> cries out:

>Nathan Sanders wrote:

>> In article <41B6F377.43F5@worldnet.att.net>,
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
 
>> > Nathan Sanders wrote:

>> > >... basic Mendeleevian
>> > > genetics...

>> > What's Mendeleevian genetics?
 
>> Oops, lexical access problem. A think-o, if you will.
>> Substitute with "Mendelian".

>Aargh!! A _native speaker_ who construes "substitute" as if it were
>"replace"???

oh dear. i've recently been through this, first on the American
Dialect Society mailing list, then on the newsgroup soc.motss. here's
the very brief summary from soc.motss (28 october 2004) (note that
nathan sanders's usage above is an instance of the second,
"encroached", variant described below.)

-----[begin forwarded message]
over on the American Dialect Society list, and in e-mail with a
colleague at Manchester, i've been exploring the syntax of the verb
"substitute" (and of its converse, "replace"). simplifying some,
there are three attested variants of "substitute":

original "substitute":
  substitute NEW for OLD (1)
  replace OLD with/by NEW
there are still plenty of people who have only this system.

encroached "substitute" (meaning 'replace' and taking over some of the
syntax of "replace"):
  substitute OLD with/by NEW (2)
this use appears in the 17th century and has become very widespread,
even in formal written english. for some time now, Merriam-Webster
dictionaries have treated it as standard (though many usage manuals
label it as simply ungrammatical). people who themselves use only
original "substitute" tend to have problems with encroached
"substitute", since it seems semantically backwards to them, but in
fact the syntax provides an unambiguous cue to the meaning: with a
second object in "for", it's NEW...OLD, but with a second object in
"with/by", it's OLD...NEW. you just have to learn to watch for those
cues.

but then, reversed "substitute" (meaning 'replace' but with the syntax
of original "substitute" -- a kind of blend of (1) and (2)):
  substitute OLD for NEW (3)
now there's unquestionably an ambiguity: (1) and (3) have the very
same syntax, but converse meanings. this use (which David Denison
at Manchester has been studying) is recent (roughly 20 or so years
old) and almost entirely british (though some american teachers of
english as a second language report it in the writing of their
students). Denison suggests that it arose in the context of soccer,
but by now it has spread very widely in the U.K.
-----[end forwarded message]

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