The use of "probably" in this t-shirt ad from a softer world is non-standard, right? I'm pretty sure I'd never heard anyone use "probably" as a disjunct until Uffish Thought, a few years ago. I mean, I can certainly see it in the Ryan North dialect, but I'm still a bit surprised.
7 comments:
Actually, I use it this way sometimes, but usually to be ironic and make fun of teenagers. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear someone in that age group using it that way.
Hey, I didn't know you read my blog. Hi! Thanks!
And yeah, it does sound intentional. It's a funny affectation, though, the voice that sounds simultaneously like a child and a cyborg.
Ah, rereading it, the "We suspect it is not possible" and "probably you'll find true love" are different personas. Maybe I'm the only one who does that.
I would've guessed that it's nonstandard, but the Oxford English Dictionary has quotations of disjunctive uses going back to 1600. Perhaps it's gone out of style and is starting to come back, but I think you'd have to do a more in-depth corpus study to determine that for sure.
Whoa. You're amazing, Jonathon. Thanks a bunch.
No problem. And I just came across two examples by an associate professor of English in an academic journal article surveying responses to usage errors. So probably it's standard after all, though I have to agree that it sounds like a Ryan North thing.
Huh, cool. Thanks.
Post a Comment