Re: Cheat "on" or "in" Exams?

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
Salvatore Volatile <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
But you must spend some time there, because when you need to find
out how public opinion runs, you ask the man in the street, right?

As for *why* the difference:

In the earliest times New York, like most American cities, had
followed the European system of having a street change its name
at almost every intersection. This had its conveniences. A
stranger, knowing someone's address to be King Street, could
learn what section of the city was thus denoted. Arriving
there he would find the street to consist of only a few houses,
and so could readily find the right one. A man was usually
said to live "in King Street," as if the street were a region,
not a thoroughfare. Toward the end of the eighteenth century,
however, the idea of numbering the houses was developed. The
Americans, less bound by tradition than the Europeans, quickly
saw that a multiplicity of short streets had suddenly become an
inconvenience. The relative location on a long street could
now be easily indicated by the number. A single name now began
to stretch out perhaps for a mile or more. At the same time, a
street lost its two-dimensional quality, and came to be
imagined as a line, like a river. So men began to say more
commonly, "on King Street."

George Stewart, _Names on the Land_, pp. 203-4

Nice theory, but where's the supporting evidence?

What would you like?

I'd like to see evidence that streets were thought of as being like
rivers, for example. What about side streets? They got the "on" usage
too. Is there evidence that main streets or consolidated streets got "on"
first? I suspect there's evidence going the *other* way, if anything.
And in modern BrE, if I remember past AUE discussions correctly, you
are more likely to use "on" rather than "in" with less important streets.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure how old he's saying the "on" usage in AmE is. In
the admittedly formal and British-influenced New York Times, "in" is used
well into 1930s, IIRC.

--
Salvatore Volatile
.

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