Pullum blogging on Questions and Conditionals

[Marius Hancu]

Hello:

You may enjoy (or not!) this recent blog entry from one of the authors
of
"The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language"

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1912

Marius Hancu

[Robert Bannister]

Interesting, but a strange use of the word "preposition".

--

Rob Bannister

[Robert Lieblich]

(Apologies for the delay in responding. Busy, busy, busy.)

The whole point of the analysis is precisely to establish that his
strange use of "preposition" is nevertheless the one that best
describes the language (which is, after all, what grammar is supposed
to do). I found it very persuasive, but that doesn't mean I'm going
to adopt it in everyday conversation.

It's a good mindstretcher for those of us who think we know how the
language works.

--
Bob Lieblich
And a Happy Thanksgiving to them what observes it

[Peter Moylan]

Robert Lieblich wrote:
> Robert Bannister wrote:
>> Marius Hancu wrote:
>>> Hello:
>>>
>>> You may enjoy (or not!) this recent blog entry from one of the
>>> authors of "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language"
>>>
>>> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1912
>> Interesting, but a strange use of the word "preposition".
>
> (Apologies for the delay in responding. Busy, busy, busy.)
>
> The whole point of the analysis is precisely to establish that his
> strange use of "preposition" is nevertheless the one that best
> describes the language (which is, after all, what grammar is supposed
> to do). I found it very persuasive, but that doesn't mean I'm going
> to adopt it in everyday conversation.

It's a lot less persuasive to those of us whose vocabulary includes the
word "whether". I had the impression that his most unconventional
analyses of "if" sentences used examples where I wouldn't have used the
word "if".

> It's a good mindstretcher for those of us who think we know how the
> language works.

Perhaps more to the point: how it is changing.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[James Hogg]

Peter Moylan wrote:
> Robert Lieblich wrote:
>> Robert Bannister wrote:
>>> Marius Hancu wrote:
>>>> Hello:
>>>>
>>>> You may enjoy (or not!) this recent blog entry from one of the
>>>> authors of "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language"
>>>>
>>>> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1912
>>> Interesting, but a strange use of the word "preposition".
>>
>> (Apologies for the delay in responding. Busy, busy, busy.)
>>
>> The whole point of the analysis is precisely to establish that his
>> strange use of "preposition" is nevertheless the one that best
>> describes the language (which is, after all, what grammar is
>> supposed to do). I found it very persuasive, but that doesn't mean
>> I'm going to adopt it in everyday conversation.
>
> It's a lot less persuasive to those of us whose vocabulary includes
> the word "whether". I had the impression that his most unconventional
> analyses of "if" sentences used examples where I wouldn't have used
> the word "if".

I wonder if he thinks that the argument should also apply in closely
related languages. I'm thinking of Swedish, where the old word for
"whether" (huruvida) is moribund and everyone uses the word for "if" in
both cases. That word is "om" and it actually happens also to be a
preposition (in the old-fashioned sense of the term), meaning "about",
but that's beside the point.

One of Pullum's differences between the two uses is this:
If you want you can have some cake. [preposition if]
*If there is any cake left I don't know. [subordinator if]

Equivalents of that second example would be grammatical in Swedish, and
there are sentences that can be ambiguous. "Om han var d�d kunde vi inte
veta" is literally "If he was dead could we not know." That could mean
either "We couldn't ascertain whether he was dead" or "If he were dead,
we wouldn't be able to find out."

--
James

[John Lawler]

> there are sentences that can be ambiguous. "Om han var död kunde vi inte

> veta" is literally "If he was dead could we not know." That could mean
> either "We couldn't ascertain whether he was dead" or "If he were dead,
> we wouldn't be able to find out."
>
> --
> James

When you write the grammar, you get to decide on the appropriate
terminology, after all. And Geoff wrote the book, or at least a large
part of it. The distinction he's talking about here is basically
whether the clause is being used as a noun (Direct Object of 'know'),
or whether it's being used as an adverbial hypothesis phrase
of some sort, as in the other one.

In one, and only one, of these two uses may one use 'whether'
instead of 'if'.

You can have some cake if/*whether you want. (Adv)
I don't know if/whether there's any cake left. (Noun)

That's because the real complementizer of the Noun clause
(a complement clause --
see http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/complmnt.html)
is 'whether', since this is an Embedded Question clause,
which requires a WH-word at the start of the question:

I know who came to dinner.
where he lives.
how he got here.
when she left.
etc.
However, sometimes the question that gets imbedded is a
yes/no question, and not a WH-question, like

Is there any cake?

In this case, one uses the special WH-interrogative word
for yes/no questions, which is 'whether'. Since 'whether'
really means the same thing as 'if' (basically, "yes or no")
we can use "if" instead of "whether", which leads to the
two uses of "if" and their differences. Nouns and adverbs
behave differently, and so do noun and adverb clauses.
That's all, really.

-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue
Happy Hogswatch All and may Gods Bless Us, Every One.
(Atheists may request the vegetarian alternative.)