On 4/11/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
Err ... maybe in America (I have noticed Americans
don't seem to see the
need to specify nationality, presumably because anyone important is from
the USA).
If an Australian said "my grandmother was born in Georgia", they would
usually mean the country. Otherwise, they'd say "my grandmother was
born in Georgia ... you know, in America".
I'm just saying in terms of the likelihood of somebody speaking
English who said they were born in "Georgia". The odds are just
statistically higher that somebody saying that, knowing nothing else
about the context in which it was said, were born in the US state than
in the Eastern European country. I of course don't mean that to be
much of a convincing argument, but it was something which occurred to
me in response to an earlier comment.
FF