No flimping
But certain other structures are not transportable. For example, in “Bill left all his money to Fred and someone”, one can reach down as far as “Fred and someone” and ask “What did Bill leave to Fred and someone?” but one cannot reach all the way down to “someone” and ask “Who did Bill leave all his money to Fred and”?
“Flimped” is the hypothetical nonexistent word which, under these theories, cannot exist. To flimp is to kiss a girl who is allergic to. For example, to flimp coconuts is to kiss a girl who is allergic to coconuts. (The grammatical failure in the last sentence but one illustrates the syntactic problem that supposedly rules out the word “flimped”)…
Dowty provides a similar, but different example: there is not, and under this theory there cannot be, a verb “to thork” which means “to lend your uncle and”, so that “John thorked Harry ten dollars” would mean “John lent his uncle and Harry ten dollars”.
The “flimp” thing rattled around my head, surfacing every few months or so, until last week, when I thought of a counterexample: Wank.
I’m not sure “wank to” is actually a counterexample. But now I’m determined to make the verb cuckold a part of my vocabulary.
