Monday, February 15, 2010

Grace learns "play with"

One reason to blog the oddities of Gracese is that I know they are all destined to die as her little language engine gradually falls into step with all the other little language engines of her generation and produces something more or less identical to my own standard English (with whatever generational quirks her generation comes up with to irk mine, of course).

Over the last two days or so, it's become clear that one of my favorite features of Gracese is moribund or already dead. My favorite feature was Grace's unusual use of "Play" as a transitive verb meaning to have fun with e.g. a toy. Note that normally "play" in this sense is intransitive, whereas play's transitivity is reserved for the meanings of playing an instrument or a game.

Grace, alas, now says "play with." Luckily, this too is not without some charm... I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure I heard her say "Mine play-with-ing it" the other day :)

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