The Logic Off Topic list

>--- In logic-ot@yahoogroups.com, Dennis Gunn <dennis@s...> wrote:
>>  >hi dennis.
>>  >
>>  >you're not really suggesting that the meaning of "i got plenty of
>>  >nothing" is obscure??
>>
>>  I am not suggesting anything, I am telling you flat out that a non
>>  native English speaker, from say Japan, would not know what what to
>>  make of that sentence.  Furthermore he would try to apply the
>correct
>>  grammatical rules to the problem of figuring out what the speaker
>>  meant and would be lead to the wrong conclusion.  Communication
>would
>>  thus fail because someone was not following the rules. I know this
>>  from eighteen years of direct observation of non native English
>>  speakers trying to deal with the nuances of the language.
>>
>>  ...
>>
>>  Anyway your assertion that they have no more or less advantages
>than
>>  "BBC" English" is easy to debunk.  In the case of your example to
>use
>>  proper English and say "I have nothing." puts the whole idea across
>>  in three words without any ambiguity whatsoever, even to a non
>native
>>  speaker, whereas saying it the other way expands the sentence to
>five
>>  words and robs it of it's clarity by denying the listener means to
>>  determine whether the speaker is referring to an event in the past
>or
>>  a current condition.
>
>No, you are wrong ... "I got plenty of nothing" has a poetic thrust
>and nuance and carries information that is lost by abbreviating it
>to "I have nothing", which is a crisper, more focussed statement and
>carries a different implied attitude.

No I'm right.  I would not deny for an instant that the "poetic 
thrust" carries it's own nuance nor would I deny that the nuance and 
color of the statement make the use of that form worthwhile in 
certain contexts.  All I am saying is that it is grammatically faulty 
and while what gives it its beauty are the mistakes, they are still 
mistakes and a person limited to using that form would run into 
problems when he started trying to construct more complex grammatical 
structures as would the listener.



>
>"I have _plenty_ of nothing" suggests that the "nothingness" that the
>speaker claims to have is not just in one area of their life, but may
>apply across a range of experience. And the casual structure possibly
>suggests an air of resignation.

There is nothing grammatically wrong with the statement "| have 
plenty of nothing".

>"I have nothing" clearly can't be a correct /literal/ statement on
>its own, so context is suddenly very important, and depending on the
>context, "I have nothing" might simply be the casual statement of a
>card player saying that they can't beat a particular hand. "I have
>plenty of nothing" would suggest that the card player felt thatthey
>were having a run of bad luck.

It would also be grammatically correct because your card player says 
"have" not "got".


>More generally, "I have a whole load of nothing" suggests that
>someone may have a general feeling that lots of important things are
>missing from their life (perhaps no decent job, no prospects, no
>property, no money in the bank, no girlfriend/boyfriend, etc).
>Using the more pungent "got" rather than "have" can then also give
>clues or cues about the social context for what is being said, and
>those might not necessarily be there because of ignorance, the
>speaker might be deliberately adopting a particular mode of speech in
>order to communicate that they are identifying themself with a
>particular social group or class (which might be relevant to the idea
>that they feel that they have "lots of nothing" in their lives).
>
>And when George Gershwin wrote the line "I got plenty of nothing", it
>wasn't incompetent use of language on his part, he was using the
>phrasing to help suggest a casual attitude on the part of the speaker
>(who in this context goes on to say that they don't care about not
>having many physical possessions, because they have things that they
>consider to be more worthwhile).

It does not change a thing that the writer was probably a literate 
articulate man imitating the speech pattern of someone who might not 
have known better.  He was consciously and intentionally using the 
mistakes as a poetic device.  Poetry is not about protecting grammar 
it is about using or abusing it to the greatest effect.  A poet too 
afraid to bung up some grammar is about as worthless as a lover too 
afraid to grab a tit.

>I'm guessing that the Gershwin line was chosen deliberately, and that
>the poster probably thought you'd recognise it.
>Possibly an attempt at subtle communication that failed to hit its
>mark.

An assumption.

>But then (like you say) that's the tradeoff, use too many
>assumed known cusltural references, and someone who doesn't know
>those references might not have a clue what you are saying. The
>payoff though, is that if the people involved do have a broad common
>stock of agreed references, the communication can go broadband.

<snip>

>But for lots of other human communications, nuance is the thing that
>makes a lot of it worthwhile, it allows us to empathise with the
>other person by letting us backtrack from their statements to
>recognise an emotional state or subtle response that may not have a
>standardised name. It's that empathic link that tells us that we are
>sharing perceptions and experiences with another living, breathing
>human being and not just some computer spitting out phrases from a
>technical manual.

When I read John Steinbeck or Somerset Mougham.  They have no problem 
getting across very powerful ideas and plenty of nuance and their 
words still speak to the reader 60, 80, 100 years after they were 
written in a way that leads us directly to the heart of what was 
being said with very little distraction.  And when I read them I feel 
like the words could have been written yesterday.  If those writers 
had taken the short cut of leaning heavily on whatever the current 
slangs and dialects were I am sure that would not be the case and 
they would sound dated.

>  > >and their speakers use them as clearly and consistently and
>>  >unambiguously.
>>
>>  It may work fine until concepts start get complicated or until they
>>  have to talk to someone outside their isolated group then things
>>  start to fall apart.  It is not a coincidence that more affluent
>>  groups within society have a better command of the language.
>
>They also tend to have the /power/ to define their own social group's
>usage as correct, and that of the less powerful as incorrect. Then,
>if you talk differently to them, it's /officially/ because you are
>supposed to be inferior or ignorant.

Which goes right to what I have been saying all along.

If you go to a dentist and he knocks every tooth that aches out of 
your mouth and then tells you he did it that way because he was too 
poor to learn how to use the more sophisticated methods "them rich 
people dentists use" do you say oh that's all right because for you 
that is the correct way to do it, or do you say that bad treatment?

Anybody rich or poor can use words correctly.

If someone through poverty has not had the opportunity to get the 
fundamental education necessary to construct a proper sentence, 
however unfortunate that may be for them that still does not mean 
they are doing it right when they are doing it wrong.  What's more in 
this society there are actually very few people who lack the means to 
learn basic grammar.   Which is not to say there may not be a simple 
lack of will to do so in some sectors or that that situation is not 
simply exacerbated by social relativists.  Personally I find that 
kind of condescension as repugnant as I would find that of someone 
who would say 2 X 2 may indeed equal 3 if you are poor or you are not 
white.  Telling people they are right when they are actually wrong is 
not only insulting but denies them the opportunity to understand and 
correct their mistakes.  In the case of language where you end up 
denying people the ability to do little things like read contracts, 
that is nothing short of criminal.


>As in that "an Hotel" example I gave in another post this morning.
>It's use of language to announce social/educational background.

I am surprised to hear there are people flogging the "an" before "h" 
I thought that idea had pretty much been totally removed from 
American English.


>Rules change, and sometimes the "teachers" get left behind.

In a tennis match you decide before hand whether the ball falling on 
the line is "in" or it is "out".  You can't change the rules in the 
middle of a match at whim of the players.  If you do then it becomes 
impossible to play the game.  Rules change but they change slowly 
otherwise no one knows what anyone is saying and little things like 
contracts become impossible.

>Well, a few years ago, the OED fnally had a clearout of old junk
>grammatical rules that they reckoned were only there because the
>people who prided themselves on knowing these things perpetuated
>them, or as "fossil" anomalies inherited from root languages.
>
>So as far as English is concerned, I think we've probably recently
>had quite a few official changes in standardised (standardized?)
>grammar, accelerated by email and the internet.
>Suddenly a whole load of people are using text intensively for their
>communications and are looking at soem of the old rules afresh and
>saying: Why the hell are we doing THIS ?

Well there is nothing wrong with conducting that process at all but 
that is entirely different than trashing basics like simple past and 
present tense.  At least I would hope so.


>  > Trying to write up a complex document using dialect is a lot like
>>  trying to build a building on a log jam in a river.  You might get
>>  away with it if all you want is a temporary light shack but if try
>>  anything bigger and heavier you will be in trouble and whatever
>size
>>  you make it you can count on it being useless pretty soon.
>
>Hmm ... do "standard English" or "BBC English" also count as dialects?
>And I'm sure that some stuffy English linguists would count US
>Standard English as a dialect.

Uh huh.  Well at least the rules of English "by the book" are 
documented and pretty much knowable whereas dialects almost by 
definition are at best hazy rarely consistent over time.  Yes we all 
know English has plenty of anomalies and obscure structures and some 
old junk that pretty much has lost its reason to exist but that does 
not mean that adding more vagary will help