Over to Visit or Down to Visit?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Alicia from Craryville, New York.

What’s on your mind? What are you thinking about?

Well, me and my new husband were talking about, I was saying I was about to go over to my dad’s house.

And I said it just like that, I’m going over to my dad’s.

And he said, oh, you mean down to your dad’s?

And then what ensued was a whole debate over whether or not over can be used in the place of saying up or down.

When going over to any location.

So what were the two locations?

Where were you and where was your dad?

My dad lives in Massachusetts, so it’s Sheffield, Mass.,

But that is south of us, right?

Now he’s nodding his head saying it’s not south.

Where is it?

It’s east.

Okay, so I’m now supposed to also know if something is west or east.

Wait, this is your dad or this is your new husband?

My new husband is saying this because he can just tell.

Do you still have the receipt for the new husband?

I already got rid of the receipt.

Okay.

But he can tell where something is just off the top of his head.

Okay.

My argument was that most people are not Copernicus and can just say,

I’m going easterly or whatever.

We all just say, I’m going over.

So this is due southeast then?

Oh, but let’s not get in the weeds.

That’s just not.

I’m just trying to picture it.

Let’s take this up a level here.

So the argument here is whether or not over there can mean what?

Can mean any direction, really.

Yes.

Because if you’re sleeping at somebody’s house, you say, I’m sleeping over.

Yeah.

Or you say, I’m coming over.

Yeah.

So to me, over is general.

It just means kind of two.

It can.

Over can mean a lot of things, yes.

And so your husband’s argument is?

Is that you should be saying you’re going down to somebody’s house or you’re going up to somebody’s house.

Oh.

Here’s the problem with prepositions.

Prepositions are like tricksy things, hobbitses.

They’re like mushy and pulpy.

They don’t carry fixed points of reference.

They’re all about the context here.

But my question is, did he understand you?

He did understand. And then I told him about prescriptive grammar and what that means and how Grant would tell him that that is not okay.

So you’ve heard the show before, it sounds like.

So things like over can mean a lot of things, but generally there’s a lot of things that can happen with over.

It can retain a sense of above because you’re kind of going above the ground as you go over to someone’s house. Right.

And also you’re kind of, you’re talking about the continuous nature of going over.

When you’re going over somewhere, over there, you’re talking about I’m continuously going as I’m traveling.

It’s a continuous act of going over.

But there’s another thing that linguist John Taylor has written about.

We’re talking about endpoints here.

We’re directing attention to places which both the speaker and the hearer know about.

You both knew about it.

And that’s why I was asking about, did he know what you meant?

So when you said over there, you were successfully communicating your meaning

Because you both knew the point of origin and the destination.

So the communication was done, regardless about his quibbling.

I like that part.

Of course.

But I also agree that you can use up and down in a map sense to talk about,

You know, we went down to Texas for a vacation,

We went up to Minnesota for some fishing.

Those things all make sense, too.

So that can be used.

You were also well within your linguistic rights to use over there.

That worked?

That does.

And I was just wondering if it had some sort of demographic to people in certain places more often use the directions, like up and down?

I don’t have any data on that.

I do know that if you want to find something really fun, Google which cities use downtown and what they mean by downtown.

Because that’s something that varies a great deal.

Not everyone thinks of downtown as the same.

Yeah, that would be a wonderful Saturday night activity for you and your new husband.

Google which cities use downtown.

Netflix and Googling downtown.

Yes, that will really spice up our next Saturday night.

Well, I’ve got to say, Alicia, if this is all you guys are arguing about, I hope the new marriage is going well.

It sounds like it is.

Thank you.

I’m so glad I got to speak to you guys.

I love your show so much.

All right.

Take care now.

Be good to each other.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.