Re: whoever ... has/have ?

Mike Lyle wrote:
CyberCypher wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:
Alec McKenzie wrote:
Wood Avens <woodavens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 13:31:51 -0500, "Don Phillipson"
<e925@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

DJ seems mistaken. We still say things like
"all drunk drivers should be prosecuted, whoever they
may be." We do not say "drunk drivers should be prosecuted,
whichever person or persons they may be."

And there's another thing, dammit -- drunken drivers, innit.

Why would you say that, since 'drunk' and 'drunken' are both
adjectives?

My dictionary gives the first meaning of the adjective 'drunk' as
"intoxicated", while for 'drunken', "(sometimes) drunk" is the
last of four definitions.

Whatever dictionaries may claim, in my dialect, "drunk" can only
occur in sentences like "He is drunk"; I can't have it in front of
a noun.

How about in the expression "drunken bum"? In New Jersey American,
we used to call so-and-so a drunken bum because he was drunk most
of the time, but a "drunk bum" was an unknown bum who was drunk at
the moment he was being observed -- we didn't know about his
sobriety at other times.

I conclude from this that "drunken" implies "habitually drunk" and
"drunk" implies "drunk" in this instance.

But we have, admittedly informally, "a drunk", not "*a drunken".

No question about this. I would even go so far as to say that it's the
standard rather than the informal expression where I come from, even if
the driver habitually drives while under the influence.

Adjectivally, Hugh MacDiarmid has "The Drunk Man Looks at the
Thistle": I'm inclined to believe that works because we'd more often
use "drunken man".

I don't think that'd be the case in American. The offense is "drunk and
disorderly", although I have see "drunken chicken" on menus in Chinese
restaurants -- scratched hell out of the paper menus.

I'm not sure I can quite buy the habitual-occasional distinction.

I was careful enough to say that I was talking about one specific
standard expression, "drunken bum", versus another, "drunk bum", in
"New Jersey American".

But I note with pleasure that the Guardian has this headline from 3
April 2005: "US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war". The first
paragraph of the story begins with this: "An alcoholic cousin of an
aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale
for going to war in Iraq."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/03/iraq.usa1

A website called SignOnSanDiego.com has this headline from last week:
"Police investigating drunken-driving issue". A mid-report paragraph
says this: "The [73-year-old] mayor [of La Mesa, California,] was found
lying on the sidewalk near the passenger door of his Ford Explorer. [A
34-year-old city employee named Trisha] Turner was keeled over in the
driver's seat, her feet pointing out the open door."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080301-9999-1m1lamesa.html

The Telegraph wrote, on 7 March, 2008, " Tory peer attacks 'grubby
promiscuous' nurses". The peer, Lord Mancroft, went on to say this:
"The nurses who looked after me were mostly grubby - we are talking
about dirty fingernails and hair - and were slipshod and lazy. Worst of
all, they were drunken and promiscuous. How do I know that? You see, if
you are a patient and lying in a bed and being nursed from either side,
they talk across you as if you're not there. So I know exactly what
they got up to the night before, how much they drank and what they were
planning to do the next night. I can tell you it's pretty horrifying."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/29/nnurses1
29.xml

Finally, The Register reported this on 20th February 2008: "Drunken
Korean attempts to cook landlady's Chihuahua". I think most American
newspapers would say "Drunk Korean attempts to cook landlady's
Chihuahua". The other two UK usages seem to support my contention that
"drunken" implies habitual drinking and alcoholism.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/dog_flambe/

Three of those sites are UK.

--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor.
Cynical by nature, by habit, and by choice.
Native speaker of American; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared; ergo, they are not in the public domain." Anymouse.
.

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