The second thing I noticed about the hoodie which a young man was wearing was the words “For a quick and easy erection”. The first was the word
Continue readingambiguity
Pronouns
Towards the end of St Mark’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus is this passage:
When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked whether he had been dead for some time. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
We have four identified male characters, three of them named but also referred to by some form of masculine pronoun. But we have no difficulty understanding who is saying or doing what.
When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate wondered if he [Jesus] were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he [Pilate] asked whether he [Jesus] had been dead for some time. When he [Pilate] learned from the centurion that he [Jesus] was dead, he [Pilate] granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He [Joseph] then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
Continue reading
Multiple times a day
Some time ago I posted about the ‘news’ that:
Khloé Kardashian thinks about having a nose job every single day
And pondered whether she thinks (about having a nose job) (every single day) or thinks about (having a nose job every single day).
The ABC news site has an article about women in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond who have never had sexual intercourse. It quotes one woman as saying:
I think about the fact that I haven’t had sex multiple times a day.
I suspect that most people haven’t had sex multiple times a day, whether they think about that or not.
Apparently, Australians have the second highest average number of sexual partners, at least in one study using self-reported numbers from about 35 countries.
hibited
On our first holiday, I saw a street rubbish bin with a sticker/sign to the effect:
Disposal of commercial or household
rubbish in this bin is [ ]hibited.
It is obviously meant to be prohibited, but someone has cut away the letters pro. Does this mean that the disposal of commercial or household rubbish is allowed? No. Firstly, there’s no such word as hibited, and if there was, it wouldn’t mean ‘allowed’. (The only words ending –hibited are prohibited, exhibited, inhibited and the rare adhibited (let or taken in, admitted.) This might be different if the notice read ‘not allowed’ and the altered version read ‘[ ] allowed’. But, secondly, defacing a sign allowing or prohibiting something doesn’t change the allowing or prohibiting. The law/rule still exists in a law/rule book somewhere. (Defacing an official sign is probably an offence by itself.) Then how are people to know what is allowed or not? Common sense plays a large part. If an obvious gap appears in a notice, then someone has probably defaced it. I don’t know if anyone has ever seriously argued in court that a sign said ‘[ ] smoking allowed’.
Recently, a Facebook friend reposted a photo of a sign saying:
CROCODILES
DO NOT SWIM HERE
which has three interpretations. Common sense plays a large part.
O trucks!
TRUCKS KNOW YOUR
HEIGHT AND ROUTE
They also see you when you’re sleeping, know when you’re awake, and know if you’ve been bad or good …
This road sign, on the northern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is not addressed at all road-users, alerting us to the consciousness and surprisingly specific knowledge possessed by trucks, but at truck drivers, advising them to know their vehicles’ vertical dimension and their own route.
But you knew that, and so did I.
A more accurate version would be
TRUCK DRIVERS, KNOW YOUR
TRUCK’S HEIGHT AND YOUR ROUTE
But that wouldn’t fit on the sign. Failing that, a comma after TRUCKS would help (at least me).
The truncated version (signese, by analogy with headlinese?) is ambiguous because English has no separate form for vocative case, unless you count O trucks! (which sounds like a bit like an attempt to avoid rude language in the presence of children), and because the imperative form of a verb is the same as the present simple plural form (except for BE). (Some languages (probably most) distinguish either or both of those things.)
Compare
O TRUCK! KNOW YOUR
HEIGHT AND ROUTE
and
A TRUCK KNOWS YOUR
HEIGHT AND ROUTE
“TIL YOU’RE FULLEST”
A sign on the wall of a fast food outlet in my local area encourages us to:
LIVE LIFE TIL YOU’RE FULLEST
There is no doubt that the correct form is live life to the full(est). There seems to be no definite origin for this. Google Ngrams first records live life to the full in 1897 and to the fullest in 1911. (One site attributes it to Albert Einstein, but those dates would suggest not. There is no uptick in usage at any relevant time.) To the full was more common until 1974, since when to the fullest has soared in use. Both of these use an adjective as a noun, meaning approximately ‘to the full(est) extent’.
To me, live life till/until/’til/til you’re full is possible, but Google shows only five results with till, one with until, one with ’til, one with til and three as Live life ’til you’re full of it (what ever it is). But live life till/until/’til/til you’re fullest is not possible, though I can’t explain why. There is one result for Live life till you’re fullest (in a private Instagram account) and one for Live life til you’re fullest: a commenter mentions this in a reddit post showing another branch of the same fast food chain with a sign encouraging us to STAY HUNGRY FOR LIFE, which is worryingly ambiguous. Live life til you’re fullest doesn’t seem to be an official slogan of that chain.
The search results for Live life till you’re fullest also suggests: ‘Did you mean: “Live life till your fullest”?’ Umm, no, but Google has fifteen results for that: 11 videos and 4 texts. On the other hand Live life to your full and fullest are possible and moderately common (though far less than to the full(est)).
Live life is a relatively uncommon construction in English; most of the time we simply live, though we can live a (normal, good, long, full, better, holy, new, Christian, godly, quiet) life. On the other hand, we don’t die death, though we can die a (natural, slow, violent, horrible, lingering, miserable, sudden, cruel, shameful, dry) death. Some languages, including Korean, use cognate objects more than English does. Korean uses constructions like 꿈을 꾸다 (dream a dream, which is possible in English) and 춤을 추다 (dance a dance, which isn’t [edit in response to Batchman’s comment below: possible but much rarer – I will add more about this later)).
Later: so saying “dance a dance isn’t possible” was putting it too high. It is possible but much rarer. Google Ngrams puts its use at about 1/100th of sing a song. Consider: “There’s a talent quest at school. I’m going to sing a song and dance a dance”. Would anyone actually say that? And I can’t find any relevant results for dance a dance, and searching for [“dance a dance” david] finds David Bowie and not King David.
Most of these constructions sound better if the noun is modified somehow, with an adjective, prepositional phrase and/or that/which: I dreamed a dream of time gone by, Dream a little dream of me, To dream the impossible dream, Sing a new song to the Lord.
An awful lot of words
(Or a lot of awful words.)
While I was writing a recent post, I started thinking about the following words (and there are more similar):
awe (n) – awe (v) – awesome / awful (adj)
dread – dread (v) – ?dreadsome / dreadful (adj)
fear (n) – fear (v) – fearsome / fearful / afraid (adj)
fright (n) – fright / frighten (v) – ?frightsome / frightful / frightening / frightened (adj)
terror (n) – terrify (v) – terrible / terrifying / terrified / terrific (adj)
The questions which arise are ‘Who does what to whom?’/‘Who feels that way?’ and ‘Is this a good thing or a bad thing?’. Awesome is good, but awful is now almost always bad. Originally, we were full of awe, but there are references to God being awful. The most common uses of awful now are in the noun phrases an awful lot and an awful thing. An awful lot and an awful thing aren’t full of awe, and probably we aren’t, either.
This is even more so when these words are used as adverbs:
It was awesome/awful of you to do that v It was awesomely/awfully kind of you to do that.
It was dreadful of you to do that v It was dreadfully kind of you to do that.
It was fearful of you to do that v It was fearfully kind of you to do that.
It was frightful/frightening of you to do that v It was frightfully/frighteningly kind of you to do that.
It was terrible/terrifying/terrific of you to do that v It was terribly/terrifyingly/terrifically kind of you to do that.
This process is called semantic bleaching, or “the reduction of a word’s intensity”, which is really very common, as Merriam-Webster explains.
(By the way, dreadsome and frightsome are in dictionaries, but are obviously very rare. If I was writing a historical fantasy novel, I would have a character nick-named Dreadsome.)
(I seem to remember a cartoon in which a primary school teacher says to a student something like “There are two words I will not tolerate in this classroom. One is cool and the other is groovy.” The student replies “Cool! What are they?” I can’t find that, but there is definitely one of a father saying to two children “There are some words I will not tolerate in this house – and ‘awesome’ is one of them”. There’s nothing wrong with awesome – it’s just overused.) [Edit: it may have been swell and lousy – see the comments below.]
Small barista made coffee
Facebook is advertising a retailer’s
small barista made coffee
for $2.
What do the retailer’s large baristas make? (Apart from the minimum wage?)
Signs of ambiguity
Youtube more-or-less randomly showed me two ads with similar taglines:
We’re built for growing businesses.
and:
Your business matters.
Ambiguity in English arises for a number of reasons. One is that a gerund-particle (like growing) can be used in a noun-type way (We’re built for the purpose of growing businesses), or an adjective-type way (We’re built for businesses which happen to be growing). In this case, the ambiguity is small, and probably deliberate.
Compare Moving pianos can be dangerous (which can have both interpretations), Tuning pianos can be dangerous (which can only have the noun-type meaning) and Falling pianos can be dangerous (which can only have the adjective-type meaning). Note that the ambiguity can be resolved by using a different verb form: Moving pianos is dangerous (gerund) v Moving pianos are dangerous (participle).
Another reason for ambiguity is that many words ending with –s (like matters) can be a plural noun or a 3rd person present simple verb. In this case, the full stop probably forces the verb interpretation. Even without the full stop, most people would find the verb interpretation, which creates a complete sentence, in preference to the noun interpretation, which creates a noun phrase: compare Your business matters are important to us.
Last weekend we went for a drive in the Blue Mountains. I saw a sign saying Falling rocks, and thought that it probably doesn’t, especially from the height of the cliffs there. Another sign said Slow buses, in which slow might be an adjective or an imperative verb. In this case, most people would find the incomplete adj + noun interpretation. In the imperative verb + noun interpretation, there are further options if you are the bus driver, a super-hero or a pedestrian.
Today we drove in another direction. We visited a business which proclaimed Growing since 1919. Especially apt for an orchard/nursery/garden supplies business. One of the banners in the outdoor furnishing section stated Dark matters, which I couldn’t quite figure either way.
Take a photo for me
A document contained a sentence by an applicant similar to:
The police searched my office and took a photo for me with [another person].
The context made it clear that they took a photo of him. Take a photo of me has at least two meanings, but take a photo for me probably has only one (the second is possibly possible, but I can’t think of a context in which it would be a reasonable interpretation).
In the movie Airplane!/Flying High! a group of reporters attends the airport’s control tower (looking very un-1979). After asking the flight controller some questions, the chief reporters says to his colleagues, “Okay, boys, let’s get some pictures”. They then physically remove some framed photos from the wall. Get some pictures has two meanings in that context, but I’m trying to think of whether it would in my original sentence: The police got some pictures of me.
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 