[analytic] Apples in the Basket
J L Speranza
interesting comments.
I enjoyed, again, Koenig's quotations from the work of Wierzbicka (An
appendix below lists her work and provides some Wierzbicka/Grice
references). Indeed, Wierzbicka seems, inter alia, to recapitulate in a way
the polemic Grice vs. Strawson-Warnock. I'm adding Strawson now not only
because his _Introduction to Logical Theory_ seems to be Grice's main
target in 'Logic and Conversation', but also because I have excerpted below
some of his views on the natural language counterparts for "(x)", "(Ex)"
and "(ix)".
As for Warnock, I add in my reply to Tapper a ref. to his _English
Philosophy Since 1900_ (on the nature of the 'natural language'
_implications_).
More detailed comments on the posts below.
Cheers,
JL
Refs.
Grice, H. P. 1967. Logic and Conversation.
Studies in the way of words.
Strawson, P. F. Introduction to logical theory. London: Methuen
Warnock, G. J. Metaphysics in logic.
Proceedings Aristotelian Society.
Repr. in A. Flew, Essays in Conceptual Analysis.
English Philosophy Since 1900.
"H. P. Grice." Dictionary of National Biography.
Wierzbicka A, Semantics. Oxford University Press.
====
Neivens writes:
>"One might think one would be unwise to say that."
>Here again, the addition of "some" to either (or both)
>uses of "one" would seem to have a fairly disruptive effect.
I guess this disruptive effect may be seen as merely impliaturish, but
certainly does not belong in sense (i.e. it would not turn your utterance
_false_). I am reminded of Grice's comment on Warnock's elaborations on
'very' vs. 'high':
"we [Austin, Warnock, Grice] once spent
5 weeks in an effort to explain why sometimes
'very' allows [...] the substitution of
'highly' ; and we reached no conclusion.
This episode was ridiculed by some as an
ultimate embodiment of fruitless frivolity"
Grice, Reply to Richards, p. 57.
I would not think that Grice's statement would be refuted if it were found
out that only _one_ ridiculed the episode. But I get Neivens's point.
One confirmation that native speakers regard 'some' and 'one' as _not_
interchangeable is this odd particle, "someone" (as oppposed to 'no-one',
but note the non-existence of 'all-one'). Surely if 'some' and 'one' meant
the same 'someone' would be (like 'very very') utterly emphatic or
downright redundant (as it perhaps ain't).
Neivens quotes the entry for the 'indefinite article' from
http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=591041
>'a' vs. 'an' largely split off
>in function from the numeral c. 1150
I have now checked with the OED and indeed it confirms the reference above
(not that I dobuted it). The OED reads in the entry for 'a'. The OED notes
that the use of 'a' for the definite numeral is still effective qua
'dialectal' feature. However, this applies to only adjectival positions ("A
block is red"). Apparently, 'a' can _not_ be used in predicative positions
("How many apples are there in the basket?". "There are two" (vs. "There is
a")). The OED reads as per Appendix II.
As for the functional categorisation of 'there' in 'there is', Neivens writes:
>[One] interesting point is whether "there"
>is to be regarded as a pronoun in this one use,
>and an adverb in all other instances,
>or as an adverb per se.
Indeed. While I would be happy to endorse the motto, "noun is as noun
does", I'm not sure about this particular. It seems to me that to regard
'there' as a _(pro)noun_ that would thus fulfil the function of a subject
in the sentence is pretty ad-hoc. However, I see the point of the
grammarians.
Tapper offers a Gricean explanation for an inference that Warnock finds
dubious:
There is a prime number between 13 and 19.
__________________________________________
Ergo: there is a prime number.
offering an equivalence in terms of 'material-object' which I found very
apt: "There are snails (in the garden)." Tapper writes:
>it would be odd to say "U believes,
>and wants A to believe, that there are snails".
>This is roughly because it would be irrational
>and/or conversationally inappropriate to want someone
>to believe something you know she believes already.
Or perhaps 'otiose', as I prefer.
>if some conjunctive existential assertion S
>conforms with the usual conversational maxims,
>it does not necessarily follow that each
>conjunct, uttered separately, would conform with the maxims.
Right. I agree with your recasting Warnock's example in Gricean dress.
Warnock seems to allow that, if there are divergences between, say, the
quantifiers and their natural language counterparts, these divergences may
be seen as belonging in the _implicature_. Thus in the chapter on 'Logic'
in _English Philosophy Since 1900_ he writes:
"There are [...] in almost any use of
language _implications_ [emphasis Warnock's]
of many quite different kinds, and of varying
degrees of inlexibility -- all, however,
entirely different from the sharp, clear
relations that obtain between the formulae
of a calculus. A calculus is thus not an
accurate picture even of some few aspects
of some part of language; even if we rope
it off, so to speak, what it omits altogether,
we are left with nothing so exact and relatively
uncomplicated as the firmly articulated
formulae of the logician. At best his calculi
might be metaphorically described as rather
simple, conventionalsed maps of a language,
they lack the fidelity of a detailed, realistic,
aerial photograph."
Warnock, English Philosophy Since 1900, p. 132.
It would perhaps be up to the Warnockian to provide examples of utterances
of the "there is"/"there are" form which are 'naturally occurring'.
(Although Tapper's 'There is a God' is a very good one). For the record,
one of the phrases that Warnock contrast with 'there is' is 'there is such
a thing as'. In its plural form, he considers 'There are such things as
tigers' and 'There are shadows (in the moon)'.
"What then of 'There are such things as shadows"?
The most plausible use that I can think of for this is
an ironic one, calling attention to the obvious --
addressed, for instance, to a painter who always leaves
the shadows out of his pictures. Similarly, one might
say 'There are such things as tigers' as an ironically
phrased reason for not spening the night in the open".
(Warnock, op. cit., p. 90).
I thank Helzerman for his formulation of Montague's alternative take on
'quantifiers' as 'three-headed beasts'.
>Things become more interesting when they start
>nesting: For example, the sentence
>"All men love some woman."
>has two different readings.
Or, to use an example from Grice, _Aspects of Reason_:
"Everybody loves my baby,
but my baby don't love nobody but me."
As the editor writes:
"From [that utterance above] it follows
that I am my baby. However, there is a
clear sense in which [the utterance above]
is not [...] a complete piece of reasoning.
A complete piece would at least point out
that, assuming a universal domain of
quantification for 'everybody', if everybody
loves my baby, then, since my baby is included
in 'everybody', my baby loves my baby. But
since my baby don't love nobody but me, I must
be my baby".
(R. Warner, in P. Grice, _Aspects of Reason_,
Oxford: Clarendon, p. xxxiii).
Helzerman adopts something like Jespersen's theory on 'there is' (as being
uttered _regardless_ of the number of what will follow). In a way,
Neivens's observation that 'there' may indeed be seen (however ad-hoc) as a
'pronoun' supports this. I'm disappointed that one of Neivens's sources has
'there is two apples' as _non-standard_ when, on our account, it becomes
the mandatory form. In this, 'there' would parallel 'it' in cases like:
A: Who is it?
B: It is the Marx Brothers.
Surely only the most pedantic grammarian would go, "It _are_ the Marx
Brothers."
Helzerman provides a deep structure for Spanish 'Hay manzanas', viz. 'Dios
hay manzanas'.
>it would only be the
>_surface_ structure which wouldn't
>fit the pattern. The _deep_ structure
>would fit the pattern!
Granted. I'm sorry I missed your deistic deep structure so blatantly.
A note on 'Es gibt'. Tapper noted that, unlike "there is" (with spatial vs.
non-spatial uses of 'there'), there doesn't (don't?) seem to be that many
contexts -- in German -- which would allow for an ambiguous rendering of
'es gibt'. One complication is that 'gibt' seems to require a specification
of the _indirect object_. I can think of the following:
"Es gibt eines Wurm (im Garten)".
("There is a worm in the garden"). While the 'existential' reading seems to
be the more natural, perhaps in some artificial context, we can imagine
that the speaker means some bird to be the referent of 'es'. (It gives a
worm -- to its offspring). We need High German documents to support my
claim that 'es gibt' _can_ be ambiguous, though.
Finally, I found G. Koenig's elaborations on 'there is' as "thez" and in
terms of foreground to be of great interest, and I'm glad he was able to
find a counterpart in his system for all of my utterances. I may yet come
out with one that won't fit his pattern though (the counterexamplary in me,
I guess).
I enjoyed Koenig's further quotations from Wierzbicka, too. Indeed, a
search with http://www.amazon indicates that she quotes Grice at least
three times in her book, viz, on pp. 67, 148, and 167. Koenig quotes from
Wierzbicka:
>""some" is polysemous.
I found that to be of great documentary importance. Finding -- from other
quotes -- that Wierzbicka refers to McCawley and other 'Griceans', I'm glad
that she makes the strong point that it's a consideration of _senses_ that
is at stake. Surely 'polysemy' sounds stronger than 'ambiguity', for
'ambiguity' we can always explain away in terms of one sense and one
'situated reading in context'. What Wierzbicka is saying is that the form
"some" is ambiguous (or polysemous) _per se_ which surely invites for a
Gricean reply. (Not that I'll provide it).
Wierzbicka also writes:
>It might be suggested that "some"
>(in the relevant sense) can be defined away as
>'not all'.
>But a paraphrase of this kind is not
>valid since 'not all' -- in contrast to 'some' --
>implies something like "most"."
I would think the paraphrase is not valid because 'all' +> 'not all' would
seem to come out as a mere implicature. Note the cancellation: "Some -- if
not all -- of the apples are pretty edible." (by a worm or other). Surely
'some' _is_ compatible with 'all' and so no way it can be 'defined away' as
'not all'!
I enjoyed Koenig's formulation of what may be regaded as a position akin to
Warnock:
>[Natural language] is universal and
>the other is a newer genetically modified form
>with more limited distribution.
>We need to be really clear whether we are using
>the older instinctive and universal set of definitions
>for quantifiers or some modern set.
Indeed. It may do to compare Warnock's postion with Strawson's here.
Warnock does indeed refer to Strawson's book in _English Philosophy Since
1900_. The relevant passage is indeed when Strawson considers different
counteparts for (x) and (Ex) and settles for
xAy iff ~xOy
"All S is P iff it is not the case that there is at least one S such that
it is not P".
Strawson is considering inferences which he find 'grotesque' if not
downright 'jocular':
"It would seem grotesque to maintain that anyone
saying 'All the books in his room are by English
authors' had made a true statement if the room
referred to were empty of books; and a bad joke
to argue 'There's not a book in his room; so there's
not a book in his room which is not by an English
author". (Introduction to Logical Theory, p. 148).
However, later on he settles for a sort of Gricean compromise. Indeed, what
Grice is saying is that both the claims of the modernist (a la Russell and
Quine) and the traditionalist (like Strawson and Warnock) can be
'accomodated' provided we explain the divergence they allege to be between
a formal device and its natural counterpart in terms of an implicature.
This is Strawson's take on the quantifiers -- vis a vis a suggestion by
Grice --:
"If someone, with a solemn face, says,
"There is not a signle foreign book in this room."
and then later reveals that there are no books
in the room al all, we have the sense,
NOT OF HAVING BEEN LIED, but of having been made
the victim of a SORT OF LINGUISTIC OUTRAGE. Of course
he did not _say_ there _were_ any books in the room,
so he has not said anything _false_. Yet, what he
said gave us the right to assume that there were,
so he has misled us. For what he said to be true
(or false) it is necessary (though not sufficient)
that there should be books in the room. Of this subtle
sort is the relation between
"There is not a book in his room which is not by an English author"
and
"There are no books in his room."
(Some will say these points are irrelevant to logic
(are merely 'pragmatic'). If to call them 'irrelevant
to logic' is to say that they are not considered in
formal systems, then this is a point I should wish not
to dispute, but to emphasise. But to logic as concerned
with the relations between general classes of statements
occurring IN ORDINARY USE, with the general conditions
under which such statements are correctly called
'TRUE' (or 'FALSE'), these points are not irrelevant.
Certainly a 'pragmatic' consisteration, a general
rule of linguistic conduct, may perhaps be seen to
underlie these points: the rule, namely, that one
does not make the (logically) lesser, when one could
truthfully (and with equal or greater linguistic
economy) make the greater claim. Assume
for a moment that the form
"There is not a single ... which is not ...'
were _introduced_ into ORDINARY SPEECH with
THE SAME SENSE as
"~(Ex)(Fx & Gx)"
Then the operation of this general rule would INHIBIT
the use of this form where one could truly say simply
"There is not a single ...'.
(or
"~(Ex)Fx").
And the operation of this inhibition would tend to confer
on the _INTRODUCED LOGICAL FORM_ just those logical
presuppositions which I have described; the form would
tend, if it did not remain otiose [sic!], to develop
just those differences I have emphasised from the
logic of the symbolic form it was introduced to
represent. The operation of this 'pragmatic rule'
was first pointed out to me [...] by [...] Grice."
(P. F. Strawson,
_Introduction to Logical Theory_. London: Methuen, p. 179).
==
Appendix I: Wierzbicka on Grice.
http://arts.anu.edu.au/linguistics/arts_fac/staff/wierzbicka.html
lists some of the books by A. Wierzbicka:
1972. Semantic Primitives. (Frankfurt: Athenaeum).
1980. Lingua Mentalis. (Sydney: Academic Press).
1980. The Case for Surface Case. (Ann Arbor: Karoma).
1985. Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis. (Ann Arbor: Karoma).
1987. Speech Act Verbs. (Sydney: Academic Press).
1988. The Semantics of Grammar. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).
1991. Cross-cultural Pragmatics. (Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter).
1992. Semantics, Culture and Cognition. (Oxford: OUP).
1996a. Semantics, Primes and Universals. (Oxford: OUP).
1996b. Understanding Cultures through their Key Words. (Oxford: OUP).
1999. Emotions across languages and cultures. Cambridge University Press.
2001. Jesus's Sermon of the Mount.
A bio found at:
http://www.nla.gov.au/ntwkpubs/gw/55/p16a01.html
states that "in 1966 she spent a year in the United States, studying and
researching at MIT. Her approach to linguistics set her apart,
fundamentally, from Professor Noam Chomsky, an eminent linguist at MIT."
R. White's 'Minding the maxims' is an application of Grice with a passing
reference to Wierzbicka:
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/cl/slals/maxims.htm
"Wierzbicka (1985, 1991), Goddard & Wierzbicka (1997) and Meier (1997)
challenge the claims that are made for the universality of Grice’s
Co-operative Principle."
Appendix II. OED on 'a':
"Definite numeral. Old English "an", 'one',
of which the "n" began to disappear before
a consonant about 1150. In the definite numeral
sense, "an" [...] following the ordinary
course of Old English long "a", became
in the south bef. 1300, "on" ("one")
[left] "one" as the form in all positions;
while "a" [...] became the `indefinite article.'.
But in the north "a" [was] written in both senses."
"a" [...] is still the regular form of the numeral
"one" when used adjectively, in the northern dialects."
[Qua indefinite article, 'a' is] A weakening of Old English
"an", `one'. About the same time the numeral began
to be used in a weakened sense (usually unexpressed
in Old English as "he waes god man", `he was a good man';
cf. Chron. 1137 `he waes god munec & god man,' and 1140
`he waes an yuel man'); becoming in this sense proclitic
and toneless, an, a, while as a numeral it remained
long, "an", "a", and passed regularly during the next
cent. into "on", "o".
"'a' is strictly adjective and can only be used with
a substantive following. "a = "one", "some", "any":
the oneness (or indefiniteness) being _implied_
rather than asserted. It is especially used in first
introducing an object to notice, which object,
after being introduced by "a", is kept in view
by "the"; as `I plucked a flower; this is
the flower.' Used before a noun singular, and
its attributes. Ordinarily before the name of an
individual object or notion, or of a substance,
quality or state individualized, and before
a collective noun, as "a tree", "a wish",
"a beauty", "a new ink", "a greater strength",
"a legion", "a hundred", "a pair".
==
J L Speranza, Esq
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J L Speranza
Moore: No.
Russell: Do you then have _some_ apples in the basket?
Moore: No.
Russell: Do you, then, have _apples_ in the basket?
Moore: Yes.
"he replied. And, from that day forth,
we remained the very closest of friends."
(J. Miller, 'Portrait from Memory',
_Beyond the Fringe_, Angel CD ZDM 077776477121).
Some further considerations, mainly historical, about 'some' and 'all',
bringing in some collocational variance with 'every', 'each', 'any', and
'the'.
i. PLURALITY of 'some'.
G. Koenig quotes from A. Wierzbicka's _Semantics_:
>"English sentences must draw the distinction
>[in the use of 'some']
>between "one" and "more than one" :
>"Some man admires Hitler.", vs.
>"Some men admire Hitler".
I agree. It is interesting to note that one of the tasks of Strawson in his
_Introduction to Logical Theory_, for all that Grice identified this work
with 'neo-traditionalism', is to drop the 'number' restriction in the usage
of 'some'. Strawson indeed points to what he refers to as 'the implication'
of plurality of 'some':
"We should hesitate to accept
'There is at least one thing which both f and not-g'
as paraphrase of
'Some x's are not y';
which is the way we are told to read 'xOy'.
For to say, e.g., that some tigers are not fierce
would normally be taken to _imply_ that there was
more than one tiger which was not fierce. But then we
should experience precisely the same hesitation over
the proposed reading of 'xOy', given that it is the
contradictory of 'xAy'; for the contradictory of the
statement that all tigers are fierce is the statement
that at least one tiger is not fierce. The formulae
'(Ex)(Fx & ~Gx)' and 'xOy', whatever their differences,
have in common this particular discrepancy from
the ordinary form 'Some x's are not y's." (Strawson, p. 166).
He goes on to admit that cancelling this implication does not eliminate the
problems surrounding the identification of 'all' and 'some' with (x) and
(Ex). Thus he writes:
"The consistency of the system can be secured in this
way. But the price paid for consistency will seem a high
one, if we are at all anxious that the constants 'all',
'some' and 'no' of the system should faithfully reflect
the typical logical behaviour of these words in ordinary
speech. It is quite unplausible to suggest that if someone
says
'Some students of English will get Firsts this year',
it is a sufficient condition of his having made a true
statement, that no one at all should get a First. But this
would be a consequence of accepting the above interpretation
for I. Note that the dropping of thhe implication of
plurality in 'some' makes only a minor contribution to the
unplausibility of the translation." (op. cit. p. 173).
ii. The singularity of 'all' -- and the utility of 'each' and 'every'.
In my previous note I remarked the oddity of the phrase 'someone', for
surely if 'some' and 'one' are logically analogous (both renderable by
"(Ex")), the phrase 'someone' would seem somewhat redundant. I belive there
are oddities, too, involved in the use of 'all', 'every', and 'any', if not
'each'.
Unlike Latin 'omnis' (or French 'tout'), 'all' does not seem to allow for a
colloquial _singular_ context, which is a shame (See the OED cites below
though). This surely invited the idea that 'every' (cognate with 'each') is
the all-time [sic] companion to 'some'. (It's the restricted uses of
'every' in the plural which are a shame here, though). Thus, we have
'someone' and 'somebody'. And while we don't have 'all-one' and 'all-body'
(but cfr. the OED's recognition of 'all-body' as a Northernism), we _do_
have 'everyone' and 'everybody'.
iii. 'any' and the irrelevance of number. 'any apple', 'any apples'.
'Any' is interesting _per se_. The OED suggests that it may be,
etymologically, the OE equivalent of L. 'unulus' which is the diminutive of
'one'. (Used for small apples and stuff, I would think). While 'anyone' and
'anybody' (like 'everyone' and 'everybody') make sense, the use of 'any' is
importantly restricted to only a small range of purely _affirmative
statements_ though.
iv. The uniqueness of 'the': overstated?
Finally, I would like to combine some observations from the thread on 'The
Twelve Apostles' with this one of 'apples in the basket'. It was my
previous idea that there was some analogy with 'the' and 'a' (or 'one') and
thus with 'some', in that 'the', as per defined by Russell, makes a claim
of _UNIQUENESS_, and surely 'unique' is some version of the 'unity'.
However, there are differences. Consider the very phrase 'the twelve
apostles', where 'the' freely combines with a numeral. (The primary
collocation would be (he's) 'the one' as in the lyrics from _A Chorus
Line_, or in adjectival position: 'The one person to provide the right
answer was he')). Now, a numeral (such as '12') can co-vary with the 'the'
phrase and with what may be called 'indefinite descriptions'. We thus have
'the 12 apostles' but we also 'twelve apostles' _simpliciter_.
Neivens had written
>If we look at the cases where ['there is' is] actually used,
>it generally coincides with an indefinite reference.
>We'd say "there is an apple in the basket," with an indefinite
>article, or "there are apples in the basket" which
>is an indefinite plural. [...]
>I don't think that constructions like "there is the
>apple in the basket" or "there are the apples in the basket"
>have anything like the same kind of general usage.
Indeed, 'there are 12 apples in the basket' looks natural; and while
'twelve apples' seems like a definitely quantified phrase, it lacks
something of the Russellian uniqueness, for we are certainly not talking of
_the_ twelve apples (a la 'twelve apostles') in the basket, but of _any_
twelve apples -- which I suppose is a very clever grammatical way of making
a logical point.
Cheers,
JL
==
From the OED.
* 'all'. " 'all' = 'every'. Cognate with Latin "omnis", Fr. "tout" ("tout
homme"). [cfr. the northern] 'all body'.
Cites:
1175 Lamb. Hom.
"Wurthian alre erest thine father & thine mother over all earthly thing."
1398 Trevisa Barth.
"And this we see all day, with our eyes."
1556 Lauder Tract.
"Zour dewtie that ghe aucht till all creature."
1558 Kennedy in Wod. Soc. Misc.
"Let all Christian man have refuge to the judge."
"'all' can also mean 'any whatever'. In universally exclusive sentences
or clauses; as "without all" (cf. Latin "sine omni"). Now only in such phr.
as "beyond all question", "beyond all doubt", "beyond all controversy",
etc., or where the exclusion is expressed by a verb, as to deny, disclaim,
renounce, all connexion.
Cites:
1605 Shaks. Macb. iii. ii. 11
"Things without all remedy, Should be without regard."
1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng.
"He disclaimed all intention of attacking the memory of Lord Russell."
"Distributed to each member or part of the whole, by the forms "all and
some".
Cites:
1325 Coeur de L.
"They that would nought Christian become, Richard leet sleen him all and
some."
1386 Chaucer Knts T.
"These lords all and some been in the Sunday to the city come."
1460 Play Sacr.
"Whyle they were alle together & some Comedite corpus meum."
1600 Holland Livy
"To endeavour and strain themselves, both all and some [singulis
universisque]."
1681 Dryden Abs. & Achit.
"Now stop your noses, readers all and some."
1870 Morris Earthly Par.
"Two hours after midnight all and some into the hall to wait his word
should come."
"It has been suggested that in this phrase some was a corruption of
isame (isome) `together,' but the phonology shows that it is not so; with
the first quot. above cf. this from the same poem:
1325 Coeur de L.
"Among the toun folk was no game; To counsayl they gaderyd hem insame."
"all and some" was also used in sing., as if confused with "sum"; = "the
whole sum", "the sum total".
1303 R. Brunne Handl. Synne
The tale is written all and some in a book of Vitas Patrum.
1380 Sir Ferumb.
"He shridde him therewith & clothed him all & some."
1386 Chaucer Wife's T. Prol
"This is all and some"
1480 Childe of Bristowe
"By that the fourtenyht was come, his gold was gone, all and some."
1520 Wyatt Wks.
"Henceforth, my Poins, this shall be all and sum."
1625 Gonsalvio's Sp. Inquis.
"Herein resteth all and some concerning these matters."
* "every". "Etymological note: Old English "aefreaelc, "aefreylc": see
"ever" and "each". The OE. "aelc", "ylc", was a compound of "a", synonymous
with "aefre"; but, owing to umlaut and contraction, the etymological force
of the word had become obscured, and "aefre" was prefixed in order to
express more distinctly the original sense. Although the phrase was always
written in OE. as two words, it had in 10th c. already come to be felt as a
compound, and when it is governed by a prep. this is placed before the
first of the two words. The forms marked A descend from "aefreelc", and the
b forms, including the mod. "every", from "aefreylc". It does not appear
that "aefre" was prefixed to the other two words, "aeaehwilc" and
"aeehwilc", which enter into the history of "each".]
"'Every' is used to express distributively the sense that is expressed
collectively by "all". Originally this sense was expressed by "each", from
which "every" differed only in emphasizing the element of universality in
the signification. Thus Wyclif writes "every langour and each sekenesse,'
it being unnecessary to repeat the emphasis. When "every" had ceased to be
recognizable as a compound of "each", the two words were at first often
used somewhat indiscriminately, but their functions were gradually
differentiated. In mod. usage, every directs attention chiefly to the
totality, each chiefly to the individuals composing it. It may also be
observed that each usually refers to a numerically definite group, in
contrast to the indefinite universality expressed by every: thus `Each
theory is open to objection' relates to an understood enumeration of
theories, but `Every theory is open to objection' refers to all theories
that may exist.
"all and every" (= Latin "universi et singuli"). The phrase is also
occas. used in concord with a sb. in sing. or pl.
Cites:
1502 Gt. Charter in Arnolde Chron.
"That the chartur aforsaid in all and every her articles be observed."
1526 Pilgr. Perf.
"Let us all & every of vs in all our distress run to that throne of mercy."
1570 Grindal Rem.
"That all and every of the said vicars have a Bible."
1655 Mrq. Worcester in Dircks Life
"Use these seals to all and every of the purposes aforesaid."
1826 Bentham in Westm. Rev.
"To all and every the children and child of the said intended marriage."
1845 Act 8 & 9 Vict.
"The said covenantor, his heirs, executors, or administrators, and all and
every other person whosoever."
* ""any". In affirmative sentences, 'any' asserts concerning a being or
thing of the sort named, without limitation as to which, and thus
constructively of every one of them, since every one may in turn be taken
as a representative: thus "any chemist will tell you"; "anything that I can
do is at your service"; "you may have anything almost for the asking.".
Cites:
1300 Cursor M.
"The nedder was more wise than any beast."
1413 Lydg. Pylgr. Sowle
"Hit is full hard to ony creature to maken declaracion."
1592 Shaks. Rom. & Jul. v. i. 67
"Mantua's law is death to any he that utters them."
1598 Shaks. Merry W. i. i. 11
"Any time these three hundred years."
1699 Bentley Phal. Pref.
"The director was consulted by him upon any difficulty."
1798 Ferriar Illustr. Sterne
"That enable any person to give an answer to any question."
1861 Buckle Civilis.
"I challenge any one to contradict my assertion."
Jon Neivens
From: "J L Speranza" <j...@netverk.com.ar>
To: <anal...@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 10:09 AM
Speranza,
Apologies for the delay in responding to your points.
First, to revisit your previous comment:
> J. Neivens points to the contrast between 'a' and 'one', which I take to be
> more _diachronic_ than anything else (i.e. _literally_, "a" = "one"?).
> Thus, when Grice gives the counterpart for "(Ex)" he lists "some" and "at
> least *one*". If 'a' and 'one' _mean_ (more or less, truth-conditionally)
> the same, then indeed, 'some' = 'a'.
>
> The issue of number (singular/plural) seems to be relevant in that 'some'
> allows for a singular collocation: "There is _SOME_ apple in the basket"
> (cfr. "That was _some_ party")).
To be honest, I think my position would be that there are interesting points of
equivalence between 'some' and 'a,' but I'd hesitate to go as far as saying that
'some' = 'a'.
> Neivens writes:
> >"One might think one would be unwise to say that."
> >Here again, the addition of "some" to either (or both)
> >uses of "one" would seem to have a fairly disruptive effect.
>
> I guess this disruptive effect may be seen as merely impliaturish, but
> certainly does not belong in sense (i.e. it would not turn your utterance
> _false_).
One could perhaps go with "Someone might think anyone would be unwise to say that"
inasmuch as the "someone" would be assumed to include himself amongst "anyone," but
this doesn't seem to happen with "Someone might think someone would be unwise to say
that." None of these variants are strictly _false_ of course, or even necessarily
lacking sense-- it's more a case here of the kinds of sense that variants on "one,"
"someone," or "anyone," allow.
> One confirmation that native speakers regard 'some' and 'one' as _not_
> interchangeable is this odd particle, "someone" (as opposed to 'no-one',
> but note the non-existence of 'all-one'). Surely if 'some' and 'one' meant
> the same 'someone' would be (like 'very very') utterly emphatic or
> downright redundant (as it perhaps ain't).
The relation between "someone," "anyone," "everyone," and "no-one," is interesting in
this regard, especially considered alongside "some-/any-/every-/no-body" and
"some-/any-/every-/no-thing." The oddity is why the distinction between "any" and
"every" seems to be solidly maintained in these constructions? It may be the case
that I'm making these distinctions look too suspiciously tidy-- there may well be
other stuff which I've overlooked that muddies the waters here
> The OED reads in the entry for 'a'. The OED notes
> that the use of 'a' for the definite numeral is still effective qua
> 'dialectal' feature. However, this applies to only adjectival positions ("A
> block is red"). Apparently, 'a' can _not_ be used in predicative positions
> ("How many apples are there in the basket?". "There are two" (vs. "There is
> a")).
To pick up one particular point in the OED entry:
> "'a' is strictly adjective and can only be used with
> a substantive following. "a = "one", "some", "any":
> the oneness (or indefiniteness) being _implied_
> rather than asserted.
This again seems to be borne out where we use an indefinite article phrase as the
subject without a "there is" construction. This usage seems more inclined toward
"a/an" as "any" rather than "some." The way I see it, "there is an apple" gives a
grammatical regularity inasmuch as we'd use it for "some apple," whilst the
unmodified form "an apple" is then left as it is, and treated as effectively always
meaning
"any apple." On the other hand, the sense in which this could be taken as "some"
isn't _structurally eliminated_, it's more a case of taking it this way as matter of
convention. So in many respects it's a pretty ad hoc linguistic
construction that I'd be proposing here.
> ii. The singularity of 'all' -- and the utility of 'each' and 'every'.
>
> In my previous note I remarked the oddity of the phrase 'someone', for
> surely if 'some' and 'one' are logically analogous (both renderable by
> "(Ex")), the phrase 'someone' would seem somewhat redundant. I believe there
> are oddities, too, involved in the use of 'all', 'every', and 'any', if not
> 'each'.
>
> Unlike Latin 'omnis' (or French 'tout'), 'all' does not seem to allow for a
> colloquial _singular_ context, which is a shame (See the OED cites below
> though). This surely invited the idea that 'every' (cognate with 'each') is
> the all-time [sic] companion to 'some'. (It's the restricted uses of
> 'every' in the plural which are a shame here, though). Thus, we have
> 'someone' and 'somebody'. And while we don't have 'all-one' and 'all-body'
> (but cfr. the OED's recognition of 'all-body' as a Northernism), we _do_
> have 'everyone' and 'everybody'.
I think the idea that 'every' is the companion to 'some' does perhaps lead to a
blurring of the possible distinction between 'any' and 'every.' The distinction
itself seems to me at least to suggest that 'every' is extensional and 'any'
intensional. So whilst it's natural enough to replace 'every' with 'all' but I'd have
doubts about extending this to 'any.' Of course what I'm talking about here is again
the problem of the natural language equivalents of universal and particular
quantifiers.
> iii. 'any' and the irrelevance of number. 'any apple', 'any apples'.
>
> 'Any' is interesting _per se_. The OED suggests that it may be,
> etymologically, the OE equivalent of L. 'unulus' which is the diminutive of
> 'one'. (Used for small apples and stuff, I would think). While 'anyone' and
> 'anybody' (like 'everyone' and 'everybody') make sense, the use of 'any' is
> importantly restricted to only a small range of purely _affirmative
> statements_ though.
I'm getting ever more curiouser about the relation between 'any' and 'some,' since it
seems to me that taking 'some' as the counterpart of 'every' is perhaps more _forced_
than would be the case with 'any.' It doesn't look like a natural language
counterpart, at any rate (although it certainly allows for a neater square of
opposition if we take 'any' and 'every' as equivalent.) But I have my doubts as to
whether, in this regard, 'some' could be regarded as a simple limitation upon 'all'
as opposed to 'any.'
> As for the functional categorisation of 'there' in 'there is', Neivens writes:
>
> >[One] interesting point is whether "there"
> >is to be regarded as a pronoun in this one use,
> >and an adverb in all other instances,
> >or as an adverb per se.
>
> Indeed. While I would be happy to endorse the motto, "noun is as noun
> does", I'm not sure about this particular. It seems to me that to regard
> 'there' as a _(pro)noun_ that would thus fulfil the function of a subject
> in the sentence is pretty ad-hoc. However, I see the point of the
> grammarians.
My own take on this is based much more on the use of a pronoun for this kind of
construction in other languages. As I mentioned before, I think one should beware of
looking at "there is" in terms _too_ dependent upon the peculiarities of English. But
it seems to me at least that the "there is" construction _itself_ makes use of
"there" in a pretty ad hoc fashion.
If we take it as functioning in such a way as to allow an indefinite article
phrase to divide between "any" and "some" it perhaps looks ad hoc to some purpose. So
if I wanted to say: "Any apple is green" I'd go with "An apple is green," and if
"Some apple is in the basket," I'd say "There is an apple in the basket," then it may
be that this ad hoc construction has a fairly clear cut functional aspect. That is
pretty much how I'm looking at this, anyway.
But to return to the question of the natural language counterpart of (Ex), I'm
wondering whether the first question shouldn't be "What is the counterpart of (Ex)?"
but "Is there a (single) counterpart of (Ex)?" At first glance, this is how I'd take
the Strawson point on the 'number' restriction in the usage of 'some.'
The most obvious point though is that (Ex) quantifies over a range of variability
which doesn't apply for actual utterances, so in some ways it would perhaps be
surprising if there was one particular form that corresponded exactly to (Ex), as
opposed to a range of constructions?
It certainly _seems_ as if we'd use "there is," "there are," or "there isn't," "there
aren't," constructions in cases of "an" or "a" or an indefinite plural "some" or
"any" (at least with "there isn't" or there aren't") or "no" or "none," or sometimes
a numerical term. But we also have cases such as you cite from Warnock, of "There are
such things as tigers."
Again, the sense of "any" that crops up is interesting. If we say, e.g., "Twelve
Apostles were in Gethsemane," as opposed to "The twelve Apostles were in Gethsemane,"
then the first seems to allow that there may be apostles other than these twelve_not_
in Gethsemane. On the other hand, "There were twelve Apostles in Gethsemane," seems
more focused upon the _number_ of Apostles in Gethsemane, with less allowance that
there may be Apostles other than this number elsewhere (although this is not strictly
ruled out, of course.)
> Helzerman adopts something like Jespersen's theory on 'there is' (as being
> uttered _regardless_ of the number of what will follow). In a way,
> Neivens's observation that 'there' may indeed be seen (however ad-hoc) as a
> 'pronoun' supports this. I'm disappointed that one of Neivens's sources has
> 'there is two apples' as _non-standard_ when, on our account, it becomes
> the mandatory form. In this, 'there' would parallel 'it' in cases like:
>
> A: Who is it?
> B: It is the Marx Brothers.
>
> Surely only the most pedantic grammarian would go, "It _are_ the Marx
> Brothers."
Indeed. In South London constructions like "I were.." and "We was.." are pretty
common. On the subject of pedantic grammarians, I've attached a perhaps vaguely
relevant piece below.
Anyway, to pick up some of your other points...
> In discussing definiteness, it may do to revise this option discussed by
> Grice in treating the iota-operator ("the") as _not_ a quantifier. A
> puzzling suggestion worth considering. Thus, in 'Presupposition &
> Conversational Implicature' (now repr. in Studies in the Way of Words, WOW)
> Grice considers issues of logical form surrounding definite descriptions,
> and refers to discussion with Hans Sluga.
>
> "The need to do [this], in some way like [this],
> was pointed out to me by Hans S[l]uga."
> Grice, p. 188 of the original reprint in
> P. Cole, _Radical Pragmatics_.
> [Actually, 'Sluga' reads 'Shuga']
>
> What _is_ that Sluga pointed out, as this footnote omitted in _WOW_ reads?
> Well, the issue concerns the correct treatment of 'the'. Is 'the' a
> quantifier -- as Grice has it on p. 22 of _WOW_ (symbolised as "(ix)"? Or
> is it, rather, a 'term-forming device' (WOW, p. 272)?
>
> i. (ix.Fx)Gx: iota-operator as a quantifier
> ii. G(ix.Fx): iota-operator as a term-forming device.
>
> For the record, Grice advocates that we treat 'the' (unlike 'all' and
> 'some') a la (ii). (p. 272) (he does this on account of the ambiguity he
> finds in utterances like "It is not the case that the apple is in the
> basket", where the existence of the apple may (but then may _not) be read
> as being entailed by the uttering of the utterance).
>
> Grice's 'minimal' pragmatics suggest that "(x)", "(Ex)", and "(ix)"
> (definable in terms of the Russellian expansion) -- and perhaps the 'lambda
> operator' used in his _Aspects of Reason_ -- give us the whole range of
> quantificational phrases in English.
I suppose the point that interests me here is whether in fact "there is" could be
regarded in a similar manner, i.e., as a term formation. In some respects I'd see
this as 'better' than saying that "there is" is the natural language counterpart of
(Ex). Additionally, I'm not sure whether "(x)" can be regarded as giving us "any" and
"every" without some added complications? This certainly isn't an issue I've thought
through in any great deal though-- it's just another apple to throw into the basket
for possible consideration...
> Appendix ii. Existential commitment. I would like to elaborate here, with
> the eventual fallacy and all, on J. Neivens's dictum in 'Re: Apples in the
> Basket'. Quoting my statement that, in 'There is an apple in the basket',
>> 'is' seems to be equivalent to 'exists'
>> (which is what the 'E' in "(Ex)"
>> is supposed to stands for -- the reason why (Ex)
>> is called the _existential_ quantifier)"
> (Perhaps J. Lynch can perhaps ask Dr. Shapiro why Russell and Whitehead
> found the need to _invert_ the "E" of "existence" in their formulation of
> "(Ex)" making it so rather unpronounceable).
> Neivens commented:
>> Personally, I've never quite _got_ what is
>> _specifically _ existential about this
>> quantifier as against any other.
> Indeed. There is a complication here which can be complicated even further
> by bringing into collation Apuleius's Square of Opposition:
> All S is P No S is P
> (x)(Fx -> Gx) ~((x)(Fx -> Gx))
> A E
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
> | |
> | |
> | |
> | |
> | |
> | |
> |_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _|
> I O
> Some S is P Some S is No P
> (Ex)(Fx & Gx) (Ex)(Fx & ~Gx)
>
> The idea I would like to explore is the rather obvious one that, for all
> the virtues of Aristotelianism -- it is simply not _necessary_ to deal with
> (x) and (Ex) -- or (ix) for that matter -- in A, E, I, O terms.
>
> In fairness to Russell's Modernism, the _simplest_ formulae involving "(x)"
> and "(Ex)" are:
>
> i. (x)Fx
> ii. (Ex)Fx
>
> (I'm less sure about "(ix)Fx" since, if Grice and Sluga are right in seeing
> it as a term-forming device "(ix)Fx" would hardly make a whole utterance).
>
> Now, although the Predicate Calculus is _not_ decidable, one wants to
> have
> Gentzen-type syntactic rules for the introduction and elimination of both
> "(x)" and "(Ex)" -- plus some sort of semantic 'truth-evaluation' (Grice's
> "1-correlation").
>
> Indeed, as I quoted in a previous post from
>
> http://www.math.uncc.edu/~droyster/math3181/notes/hyprgeom/node13.html
> the idea is that
>
> "(Ex)Fx" is [1] iff the solution set
> of F(x) is non-empty and [0] iff
> the solution set of "Fx" is empty; i.e.,
> if for [each &] _every_ replacement
> of x by a member a of the universal set,
> "Fa" is false."
>
> This may relate to Apuleius's idea regarding the _inter-definability_ of
> (x) and (Ex). For surely "A <-> ~O" (and "E <-> ~I"):
>
> ((x)(Fx -> Gx)) <-> ~(Ex)(Fx & ~Gx)
> ~(x)(Fx -> Gx) <-> ~(Ex)(Fx & Gx)
>
> So, what is, indeed, this fuss about just calling _just_ (Ex) the
> 'existential' (rather than the merely 'particular' -- vs. 'universal')
> quantifier?
>
> This all relates to Strawson's idea of presupposition and the inference
>
> (x)Fx
> ___________
>
> Ergo: (Ex)Fx
>
> People discussing this kind of 'invalid' inference are prone to consider
> full "A", "E", "I", or "O" forms, rather than the minimal formulae like
> "(x)Fx" or "(Ex)Fx", and thus pointing to the obvious invalidity (in a
> presupposition-less logic) of:
>
> (x)(Fx -> Gx)
> _______________
>
> Ergo: (Ex)Fx
>
> Quine used to famously say that one's existential commitment is reflected
> by one's use of (Ex) -- never "(x)" -- but then he also said that names
> should be eliminated from one's language, so I'm not sure one _has_ (needs
> or wants) to follow Quine?
Again, this is something I'm still considering, but I wonder about the status of the
universal quantifier as regards "every x" and "any x" in the sense of whether these
two _should_ be regarded as equivalent, and the status of the particular quantifier
in respect of both. I may just be confusing myself unnecessarily on this though.
Cheers,
Jon.
==========================================
Appendix: The lavender of the subjunctive
Eric Griffiths on the pleasures wrought by grammar from Ben Jonson to the Pet Shop
Boys, as revealed in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Rodney
Huddleston and Geoffrey K Pullum
Saturday July 13, 2002
The Guardian
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
by Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K Pullum
1,860pp, Cambridge, £100
Carved on the west front of the cathedral at Chartres, Grammar, a stern dame, looms
over two small pupils. She holds an open book in her left hand, beneath which sits a
"good boy", notably round-shouldered, already vested in what is probably a monk's
habit, his fingers tracing the page he's intently squinting at. In her right hand,
she brandishes a bundle of twigs above the bare torso of a "bad boy"; he's holding
his book with its cover toward him, his eyes are turned up into her disapproving
stare and, though he looks as if he's about to get a hiding, he has a big grin on his
face.
The scene has been restaged many times since it was sculpted 850 years or so ago, and
was in all likelihood traditional even then. In one version, the two boys have
names - respectively, Eric Griffiths and Sir Paul McCartney - for I share with the
former Beatle not only lyric gift and fabulous wealth but also an English master, AJ
"Cissy" Smith.
Paul had just released "Yesterday" when Mr Smith began to teach my class
clause-analysis and how to avoid dangling participles. We gazed at him, agog and
aghast, because it was a legend in the school (rescued years later from dereliction
by Sir Paul and now the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts) that he had washed
Paul's mouth out with soap and water for persistent solecisms or excess fruitiness of
vocabulary. Cissy has long gone to his reward, I struggle on with my round shoulders
and inculcated dislike of the "split infinitive", and Sir Paul still has the big
grin.
Neither Dame Grammar's fasces nor Mr Smith's mouthwash would be approved by The
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. This massive work (it weighs 2.5kg) is a
"synchronic, descriptive grammar of general-purpose, present-day, international
Standard English", which is to say that it offers a satellite Polaroid of the current
language and avoids on principle any suggestions about how to air-brush up your
style. Fretful sub-editors who want to know the better way with "which" and "that"
must apply elsewhere.
For descriptive grammarians, "grammaticality" is distinct from "correctness" because,
from the standpoint of quasi-anthropological neutrality proper to their task, in
language whatever is accepted is acceptable. Advice about style amounts to no more
than "aesthetic authoritarianism" or "taste tyranny", "a universalizing of one
person's taste, a demand that everyone should agree with it and conform to it". We
hang on the words of style gurus about everything from trainers to varieties of olive
oil, but on the subject of our language there is nothing to say, only market research
to report.
So the Cambridge Grammar's editors note that sentences like "They invited my partner
and I to lunch" are "regularly used by a significant proportion of speakers of
Standard English... they pass unnoticed in broadcast speech all the time". They
explain convincingly why "my partner and me" would be no more grammatical; there is
no better reason to require English pronouns always to comply with Latin inflection
for the accusative case than there is regularly to hear English verse according to
Graeco-Roman templates such as the "iambic pentameter" which have been misleading our
ears since the 19th century.
But they fail to specify when a "proportion" becomes "significant" - does it take a
bare majority or will a stroppy minority equally suffice ? - and show a touching but
unexamined reverence for broadcasting as a source of English undefiled. Descriptive
grammar can find nothing wrong with the inert officialese of, say, Radio 4, in which
forthcoming speeches by government ministers are predictably "major" before they are
uttered, and all majorities "vast", and from which decent words like "many" are
disappearing, their place taken by "an awful lot of". "Standard English" recognises
no standards of English and, indeed, cannot be distinguished from standardised
English.
We should not expect too much from linguists; they are witnesses not judges. Yet even
the members of this excellent Cambridge team sometimes fail to confine themselves
within the narrow bounds of testimony. They rightly decline to prescribe usage, but
they exceed their remit when they proscribe prescription, for it is a fact of
language use that writers and speakers concern themselves with more than information
throughput and grammaticality as strictly understood.
When we disagree about such phrases as "my partner and I", this may be a matter of
taste, but from that it does not follow, as the editors assume, that "all evidence"
is simply "beside the point". If that were so, then nobody could be "someone
eminently worthy of being followed in matters of taste and literary style", as they
say on the same page, nor would there be any reason for appealing, as they sometimes
do, to "the writings of highly prestigious authors" or "the usage of the best
writers" (they carefully refrain from naming these paragons).
They say of the sentence "In this day and age one must circle round and explore every
avenue" that it "may be loaded with careworn verbiage, or it may even be arrant
nonsense, but there is absolutely nothing grammatically wrong with it". The sentence
seems innocent enough in contrast to their own comment, which groans with
inexactitude and redundancy: the example is not nonsense of any kind, being easily
intelligible; the grammarians' "arrant" and "absolutely" are semantically empty,
thoughtlessly transferring habits of spoken emphasis into the written language. And
what is "careworn verbiage"? Perhaps the adjective is here a new portmanteau word
made up from "outworn" and "careless".
Nor are they to be wholly trusted when they tell us "The most frequent use of media
is in the phrase the media, applied to the means of mass communication, the press,
radio, and television, where both singular agreement and plural agreement are well
established" (we indiscriminately say "the media is..." or "the media are..."). All
descriptive grammarians can determine is whether something is "established" or not;
their "well" is illicit. After all, there are many things which are certainly
"established" but only arguably "well established" - the Church of England, for
example.
Take the case of "only". The Cambridge Grammar observes wearily: "There is a
long-standing prescriptive tradition of... saying that in writing only should be
placed immediately before its focus... This is another of those well-known
prescriptive rules that are massively at variance with actual usage." Yet those of us
who are not only grammarians have just cause for complaint about official letters
which run along the familiar lines of "We can only say how sorry we are that your
train was late" - that may be all they can say, but we want them to do something too,
improve the service or compensate us.
Because linguists busy themselves with "actual usage" ("synchronic" study of the
language, in their terms), they are professionally bound to scant other, earlier
usages; the "long-standing" must always give way to the "actual". This is merely the
mirror-tyranny of a previous regime in which the past lorded it over the present.
For the purposes of linguistics, sharp focus on current English is entirely
legitimate, but there are things we may, and perhaps should, want to know about our
language other than those synchronic description can reveal. Such as what Ben Jonson
meant when he wrote:
Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kisse but in the cup,
And Ile not looke for wine.
He was not asking Celia to restrict her drinking of healths to his alone but either
calling her his "onely" or, more likely, saying that her eyes were the one intoxicant
he needed, just as "leave a kisse but in the cup" means that a blown kiss, the mere
aftermath of her lips, is all he wants on his.
The traditional usage is actual in his lines every time somebody reads them with
understanding; it was still going strong when Dick Powell, in a Busby Berkeley
musical, sang the magnificent compliment "I only have eyes for you". Put the "only"
elsewhere and the schmooze evaporates: "Only I have eyes for you" (nobody else would
look at you twice); "I have only eyes for you" (I like looking but don't want to
touch); "I have eyes for you only" (the others leave me cold) - none of them matches
the hyperbole of "I only have eyes for you", which can imply he was given vision just
to look at her.
"Actual" usage is anyway not the thin, consistent layer a systematic grammar
unearths, but resembles rather Freud's metaphor for the mind as a Rome seen by an eye
that pierces through time: "an entity, that is to say, in which nothing that has once
come into existence will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development
continue to exist alongside the latest ones". The usage of those who abide by
exploded, traditional rules is usage still; maiden aunts who would rather expose
themselves at evensong than ask for "a large quantity of stamps" should be equal in
the eyes of historical description with those who don't even remember that "agenda"
was once a plural and feel they need an s for the agendas they progress through.
Freud imagined that "where the Coliseum now stands we could at the same time admire
Nero's vanished Golden House. [...] The observer would perhaps only have to change
the direction of his glance or his position in order to call up one view or the
other." Such time-travelling can happen in language too, and goes by the name of
"literature". The last line of Geoffrey Hill's poem, "Pisgah", reads: "Formalities
preserve us: / perhaps I too am a shade."
Cissy Smith might have asked 2A whether "preserve" is an indicative or a subjunctive.
That is, does the poet report that formalities have this effect or does he wish for
them to do so (compare "Saints preserve us!")? The Cambridge Grammar rightly doubts
that "present-day English" can be grammatically analysed in this way, because
"historical change has more or less eliminated mood from the inflectional system",
and it sensibly re-describes "subjunctive" as "the name of a syntactic construction -
a clause that is finite but tenseless, containing the plain form of the verb".
Hill's line, though, is a revolving door between Englishes past and present, and
intimates a history of moods, verbal and otherwise. The faint but persistent lavender
of the subjunctive about his "preserve" gives him reason for a moment to regard
himself as superseded or at least on his way into the shade, as if, talking to an
elderly relative, he began to feel his own self aged too.
Similarly with gerunds, those elusive beasts from earlier grammars so magnificently
drawn by Ronald Searle in his cartoons of "The Private Life of the Gerund" (in How to
Be Topp). A gerund is sometimes hard to distinguish from a present participle, but in
"he's smoking behind the bike-sheds", "smoking" is a participle, whereas in "smoking
diminishes your chances of getting Alzheimer's", "smoking" is a gerund.
The descriptive grammarian in quest of systematic clarity will correctly observe that
"historically the gerund and present participle of traditional grammar have different
sources, but in Modern English the forms are identical. [...] The historical
difference is of no relevance to the analysis of the current inflectional system."
But when we read the exquisite loop of Hill's line "I imagine singing I imagine"
(from "That Man as a Rational Animal...", in Canaan), we need to recognise that
"singing" is both gerund and participle, so that the line paraphrases out as "I
imagine the sound of voices in song and I am myself singing while I imagine", as if
it had six and not five words, for "singing" has been subjected to a grammatical
"double exposure"; the poem at this point takes a time-lapse photograph of English
usage, brings historical difference home to us now.
As a punishment for my sins in a previous life, I recently had to mark 64 examination
scripts in which third-year undergraduates reading English at Cambridge offered their
comments on the opening of Dickens's Bleak House:
"London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's
Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters
had but newly retired from the face of the earth... Smoke lowering down from
chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as
full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the
sun."
The candidates were excited, even over-excited, by the "imagery", as they had been
taught in school that "imagery" is what counts in literature. Very few observed the
prime syntactical fact about the novel's first page: it has no finite verbs in what
traditional grammar used to call the "main clause", and so the reader cannot tell
whether what is being described is a past or a present state of affairs.
You can see the ambiguity from the possibility of rewriting with either "is" or "was"
between "Michaelmas Term" and "lately", and again between "Lord Chancellor" and
"sitting", and so on. The Cambridge Grammar would call this "desententialisation",
and alert us to the lack of clear bearings on "time referred to" (the time Dickens is
writing about) and "time of orientation" (the time Dickens is writing in or from).
Bleak House havers creatively over the boundaries between past and present in order
to ask whether the story it's telling is about the bad old days or the way we live
now, to question confidence about history's direction, to gauge the gap, if gap there
be, between the primordial "mud" and the "Mlud" with which the Lord Chancellor is
eventually addressed on the novel's third page.
It was wrong of prescriptive grammar to stigmatise clipped sequences like Dickens's
as "not proper sentences", but such finger-wagging at least alerted its victims to
real features of writing which escape the notice of those who have more recently been
taught English.
Or consider some characteristic lines from one of the language's most grammatically
resourceful writers, Emily Dickinson:
The Luxury to apprehend
The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time
An Epicure of Me
In whatsoever Presence makes
Till for a further Food
I scarcely recollect to starve
So first am I supplied -
This would be described as "confused" by today's undergraduates, who take it for
granted that "accessibility" is the first requirement of all writing and impute
confusion to any writer who stretches them.
It is not confused, it is superbly elliptical, even aeronautic. Dickinson's vaults
and swivels resolve themselves into plain sense, as a paraphrase shows: "the
sweetness of guessing how sweet it might be to see you, just once, looking at me and
fancying me, whoever else was around, is so great that I almost forget to long any
more for a greater satisfaction - that sweetness is the first thing that keeps me
going".
Readers need respect for, a capacity to delight in, usages other than their own; such
respect and delight are not encouraged by the tendency of grammarians to treat
"usage" as if it were a noun which occurred only in the singular, nor by their habit
of dismissing how the language used to be with their equivalent of the characters'
constant refrain in EastEnders: "that's history, Kath, you got to put it behind you
and move on". To those who have interests in language other than those of the
linguist, "synchronic study" can at times seem like a polite name for parochialism.
It can be a sign of respect to raise an objection rather than roll over permissively
while re-describing usual practice in such a way as to make a new locution fine by
readjusted norms. One of the Pet Shop Boys' perkier songs has a chorus which goes:
One in a million men
change the way you feel
one in a million men
baby, it's up to me
At first hearing, a traditionalist might want to change "change" to "changes" - "one
in a million men changes the way you feel" - though even Neil Tennant might have
difficulty getting his mouth round that extra syllable while following the broad,
expansive lines of the tune. The Cambridge Grammar spends 20 extremely well-observed
pages on "number and countability" in current English, and would dismiss the claim
that "one" should take a verb in the singular; "one" with a plural verb is not
looseness but "usage".
The pedantic carper is, however, right and on the verge of a discovery; there is
something odd about that chorus, and its oddness is apt to the situation in which
two, previously promiscuous homosexuals shakily embark together on a possibly
monogamous future. Of course they are uncertain about number, and whether number of
partners matters.
The syntax is not what it seems; "one in a million men" is not the subject of a
sentence which continues "change the way you feel". "One in a million men" is a
vocative, an address to the new, perhaps permanent lover; "change the way you feel"
is an imperative, addressed by the singer to the two of them (as is clear if you
listen to the middle eight). The apparent grammatical stumble expresses splendidly a
trepidation such as any one at such a moment might experience, but you have to wonder
if the words aren't wrong to find how right they are. Language too is an affair
which, from one point of view, is always just in the flush and tremor of beginning
while, from an other, quite as sharp-eyed a point of view, it continues to run down
foreseeable grooves formed by accumulated habit. To delineate the experience of
living with and through a language (a task beneath or beyond the ambitions of
systematic grammar), we need fresh-minted terms and brilliant redescriptions such as
the Cambridge Grammar supplies in its strong arguments for the claim that "English
has no future tense", soon to be reported in the Daily Mail, no doubt, as "dons say
english has no future".
These 1,842 pages are not short of terms which will be new to the non-specialist, and
they bristle with a more-than-grammatical deliciousness : "nested dependencies";
"desiderative bias"; "sloppy identity"; "ambiclippings"; "mounting process";
"ultimate head".
Yet a language like English is simultaneously virgin and long clapped-out, so old
words for it are still good too. When Beckett gave his only broadcast talk, about his
experiences of the Irish Red Cross Hospital in Normandy where he served as
interpreter and store-keeper from August 1945 to January 1946, he ended by
entertaining
"...the possibility that some of those who were in Saint-Lô will come home realising
that they got at least as good as they gave, that they got indeed what they could
hardly give, a vision and a sense of a time-honoured conception of humanity in ruins,
and perhaps even an inkling of the terms in which our condition is to be thought
again. These will have been in France."
The words "a time-honoured conception of humanity in ruins" are ambiguous because of
uncertain juncture. He might have meant that the time-honoured conception of
"humanity" was in ruins, or that there remained an abiding conception of "humanity in
ruins", kindness amid dereliction, or even that his experiences in France refreshed
for him the old notion of "the Fall of Man", a long-standing ruinousness of the
human.
The grammatical uncertainty of juncture was apt to his forlornness and to his hopes
as he wondered what would come next, how the future might or might not be joined to
the past. His last sentence expresses a determination to learn from that uncertainty,
a determination which governed his writing till he died. The tense of that writing,
like the tense of that last sentence ("will have been"), is best described with an
old term: it is the "future perfect".
· Eric Griffiths teaches English literature at the University of Cambridge
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