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Also Sarah Palin Like Also

by | 5th, October 2008

ALSO Sarah Palin. Language Log writes:

One of the things that marks Sarah Palin as a linguistic outsider is her use of also. In part, this is just a matter of frequency…. Relative to the rates seen in large and representative corpora, Gov. Palin used also about 5 to 10 times more often than expected…

But the most striking thing about Gov. Palin’s affinity for this word is how she used it, not how often. 13 out of her 48 examples (27%) were sentence-final…

Also:

And 18 of Gov. Palin’s other alsos (37.5%) were, we might say, peripheral — initial, or between clauses, or among a pile of adverbs at the start or end of a clause, e.g….

That’s 65% of her alsos on the edges of clauses….

[I]t’s not at all clear to me whether this is an individual quirk, or a matter of regional or cultural variation. And if it’s more than an individual quirk, is it an innovation or a survival?

Sarah Palin will do what is also right for, like, Sarah Palin…

Via

Sarah Palin Talks About Herself In The Third Person

Hillary Clinton Like Totally Wipes Out Osama, Osama And Iran



Posted: 5th, October 2008 | In: Reviews Comments (8) | TrackBack | Permalink