Tim Greenwood asked: > > ... a perfectly normal linguistic process of > > attributive disambiguation of a term which had grown ambiguous > > in usage. > > Is that like the 'Please RSVP' that I see all too often? Or should > that not be excused?
*grins* Well, technically, that is not a case of attributive disambiguation, but rather ignorant redundancy. On the other hand, for many English speakers, "RSVP" is simply learned as an unanalyzed verb, pronounced "aressveepee", meaning "send a response to this message". And to castigate such speakers for politely prepending a "please" to that verb is a little too much, don't you think? --Ken
