Monday, May 23, 2005

Contraction action

New York is a real treasure trove of linguistic errors. A great place to walk around and look at homemade signs. One I spotted last week on my way to work is on a storefront that is being renovated. Fortunately the store is staying open during the renovations. And if you didn't know that, they posted a sign for you.


W'are open!

Generally language errors are really interesting because they can tell us something about the system of knowledge that speakers have. I'm thinking of things like how children overgeneralize regular morphology (He goed) or spoonerisms. But this one has me puzzled. It's not as bad as the one that used to drive me nuts back home in Pennsylvania though, a hair salon called Salon D'Vidal. They eventually went out of business though. So I don't have to worry about them anymore.

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