ESPN just used the following playful phrase:
The best is Brett to come.
Language like this is hard to critiqe, but I felt his made more sense:
The Brett is best to come.
The ESPN version maintains greater fidelity to the original syntax while mine maintains greater fidelity to the original semantics.
FYI: as far as I can tell, there is no backslash on my droid keyboard options. Hence, no html. Frik!
UPDATE: I used my home computer to add italics.
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4 comments:
Alt + space
Even one-liners need setup...
The Brett is immediately jarringly ungrammatical. Of course, after the sentence finishes, you can rethink and realize "oh that was supposed to be a joke".
The best is, on the other hand -- bang! the brain is already filling in the cliche finish yet to come... when, ha ha, BRETT TO COME springs playfully forward.
Kind of, confused/uncomfo
Matt, Thanks!
Mathew, interesting, a bottom up psycholinguistic parsing explanation, I love it!
actually, as I think about it, mathew is suggesting a top-down approach. The brain reads "the best" which significantly co-occurs with the construction "the best is yet to come" so significantly, that that constructional template is activated and then we wait to fill-in the blanks unless given data to the contrary. When we get to Brett, we managed to kludge it into our template and remain happy. hmmm, interesting....
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