| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | When in doubt, ask a native... Thread poster: transparx
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| You have a point | Apr 17, 2007 |
I tend to agree with "everyone is a native, but NOT everyone is a LINGUIST". It makes sense because LINGUISTICS and TRANSLATIONS can be tough for many people out there. I personally know MANY non-English students in various subjects/faculties with top marks in English literally pay any sum to a translator just to get "rid of the dirty work" as some of them call it!!
[Edited at 2007-04-17 23:08]
| | | | transparx 
United States
Local time: 03:05
English to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER | a white horse is not a horse (Kung-sun Lung) | Apr 18, 2007 |
Richard Benham wrote:
It isn’t. I am aware of the scope games that can be played with declarative sentences, in particular involving the indefinite article, numbers, and other quantifiers, but I am not convinced that this carries over to imperatives. If there is any such ambiguity, it is easily resolved at the level of pragmatics. (Everyday speech is riddled, as you are no doubt aware, with syntactic ambiguities that go unnoticed, precisely because pragmatic considerations ensure the alternative interpretations never occur to anyone.)
It may not carry over to imperatives, but the sentence under examination is not an imperative --at least, not a true imperative (hence the title). In this sentence, ask a native is modified by a when-clause, which, in this case, would be interchangeable with an if-clause.
It seems to me that one could easily say, when in doubt, ask a native, namely, John Doe. If this is correct, then there you have your wide-scope de re reading.
IANAS (= I am not a semanticist, thinking of another ongoing thread --but I hope it is clear I'm just joking...), so I am not sure why true imperatives do not readily give rise to scope ambiguities. Yes, you are right, a sentence such as buy a book can't easily be interpreted as there is an x, x a book, such that I hereby order you to buy x. In the negative, however, it is easier to get two interpretations.
Richard Benham wrote:
If this is how you interpret English in daily life, you would be better off using sign language. Clearly you are reasonably successful as a user of English, and so your practice is obviously a long way removed from your theory, which is elementarily flawed.
This is not how I intepret English in daily life --and btw, I thought sign language was exactly the same as what we call ordinary language. I am not sure, but I believe that sign language, too, allows for ambiguities.
I lead a simple, retired life. Except for the time I spend in the classroom, I don't talk about syntax and logic --certainly not with the people I meet when I am out with my dog. But I thought that here we were supposed to discuss the science behind language rather than brush everything off as irrelevant. Not that I think of pragmatics as being irrelevant... not at all! But I do believe, and firmly so, that boundaries should be respected --although interfaces have their value, too. The sentence It's nothing, but it's something, for instance, is entirely interpretable pragmatically, and I would certainly not wage war against a neighbor who should happen to utter it in the elevator. At the same time, if we are discussing syntax and semantics, then we cannot not (if I may) mention that this sentence is but a contradiction.
Richard Benham wrote:
Consider the sentence “I want to buy a car.” Unlike the “ask a native”, this is genuinely ambiguous. The two intperpetations could be paraphrased as “There is some x, such that x is a car and I want to buy x” and “I want it to be the case that there is some x such that x is a car and I buy x”. Mediaeval philosophers called these interpretations de re and de dicto respectively. Unfortunately, the range of possible and actual ambiguities that can arise far outstrips the ability of mediaeval philosophers to invent ad hoc Latin technical terms, but this distinction retains its force even today. Even in the de dicto case, however, there is no suggestion that the speaker would be satisfied with any old car. No one familiar with the real world would infer this. The entire discucssion of my utterance (which was expressed with the word should in the case of non-natives rather than as an imperative) is fatuous.
I am not sure I understand the sentence in bold. What do you know about the abilities of mediaeval philosophers? I personally would refrain from claiming any knowledge.
In any case, you seem to be taking issue with the wide-scope (de re) reading. But I showed above that such a reading is indeed possible. As for the dicto case, logically any old car would do; in fact, you might find someone who wants to buy the oldest car available. This is so true that if you understand the sentence as having a de dicto (narrow scope) meaning, you would ask this person, "What kind of car do you want to buy?"
Richard Benham wrote:
Returning to the topic at hand, I would suggest asking a linguistically aware native about such questions. I really do not think that linguists as such have a lot to contribute, quite apart from their disdain for prescriptivism.
I disagree! I believe that linguists have a lot to contribute to any discussion about language.
Richard Benham wrote:
Anyone has the right to contribute (your use of intervene is a classic case of interference, btw).
Finally, as you can easily check, I used contribute in this very post --as well as in others. In this particular case, I used intervene on purpose, as I knew that my contribution was not very orthodox. It seems to me that one can intervene in the discussion/debate/conversation. If not, well, my bad... anyway, it is not a classic case of interference, but of wrong word choice, if anything.
[Edited at 2007-04-18 08:14]
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