Well, this is a new one for me. Tonight I received a notice saying that a parcel had arrived for me (Yay!) but that I would have to collect it from the Post Office with ID, signature etc tomorrow (Boo!). However, I couldn't help but notice, and be bemused by, the announcement at the top of the notice:
"You have a mail!"
As far as I'm aware, mail is a good mass noun which is never preceded by any sort of number-marking determiner - all of the following are equally bad:
*a mail
*one mail
*several mail (also *several mails)
*these/those mail
*few mail
*many mail
(Perhaps I overstated that a little - some mail and much mail are fine, as would be expected of a standard mass noun, and these arguably give some indication of number.)
Anyway, I don't really have anything exciting to say about this, now that I've waffled on, just - look! Weird language stuff is cool!
Why yes, I am supposed to be reading papers and typing up assignments right now... why do you ask? ;-)
7 comments:
Interesting that you can't have a mail, but you can have an email.
The semantics of 'mail' and 'email' as verbs are interesting different as well, I think. 'Mail' is fairly standardly transitive, I think - you mail a/several letter/s, but you don't mail someone (a letter). (Eg, *'I mailed Jane the other day.'
You do, however say 'I emailed Jane the other day'.
Question for the peanut gallery - how do you find the sentence:
"I emailed Jane a letter"? I find it awkward, myself - how does everyone else feel about it? (Note- it would be different if it was something like "I emailed Jane that file" where the file is contained within or attached to the email. I'm interested in if we're talking strictly about a communicative act.)
I agree with you re *'I mailed Jane...'. How do you feel about 'wrote' (ie 'I wrote Jane')? Surely you'll get a bit of that while you're over there - I don't like it. Wrote what?? Well, I guess that's obvious - but I still don't like it! I think it needs an object. Where's Catherine when you need her? :D
I don't like 'I emailed Jane a letter' either. It's redundant, email=letter!
It certainly is interesting. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that for snail mail 'mail' covers a few different things: letters, boxes, packages, parcels, junk... but for email 'mail' is just the email? It's the same with sms/text messages. 'I smsed Jane' and 'I texted Jane' are both ok for me.
I think you may be onto something saying it's a communicative act...
I think 'write' requires either the full ditransitive alternation "write Jane a letter, write a letter to Jane" or just a preposition - I wrote TO Jane.
I share your intuitions about txting and smsing as well... ;-)
I've been told you can get away with "??I wrote Matthew yesterday" in American English, but it definitely crashes in my head.
I can quite happily say "I texted you this morning", "I SMSed you this morning" and even "I'll message you when I get there," which is zero-derivation at its most flagrant.
"??I emailed Jessi a letter" seems redundant and non-sensical to me too. I think the trick is that "email" as a verb feels like zero-derivation, but "mail" feels like a verb in its own right, as well as a mass noun.
If you're wondering, yes I am writing this from work. Currently very bored...
Garry, get on Facebook and we can play Scrabble! You'll never be bored at work again!
All this talk about emailling Jane a letter, or plain emailling Jane (not emailling plain Jane) remindes me that you owe me an email or two.
(grin)
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