Thursday, January 5, 2012

Linguistic Pedantry 1

This morning, one of my 'friends' on Facebook updated their status: "To faced lying whore!"

I've been thinking about the dynamics of this sentence since then and trying to make sense of what she meant.

We begin with a preposition, 'to', as in 'towards'. The past participle of 'to face' is now rendered as an adjective modifying the noun in the phrase. And the gerund 'lying' modifying it further. The problem with the adjectived 'faced' is that it does not have the same semantic values as 'to face'. To better make meaning of it the  verb requires the copula, and it becomes 'to be faced'. As a transitive verb it requires an object. If it took an indirect object the subject would be adjacent to something. But it is not indirect, so the subject must be in possession of a face.

The preposition and the exclamation mark on either side of the noun phrase are clear indications that this is intended as an imperative statement, and not a pejorative declaration, which it clearly would if she had meant to use 'to's homonym 'two'. We are being told to go to the reclining prostitute who is in possession of a face.

Which leaves me with just one question; Does she know any prostitutes who are unfortunate enough to not have a face?

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