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| Ron Hardin |
 Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:01 am |
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Quoted in National Review (too complicated to figure out who is being
quoted)
This issue has nothing to with private citizens communicating on the
Internet. There is simply no reason - none - to think that the FEC
should or intends to regulate blogs or other Internet communications
by private citizens.
http://www.nationalreview.com/tks/057891.html
``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
--
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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| Bobby D. Bryant |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:01 am |
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On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> wrote:
[quote:258c6ff952]Quoted in National Review (too complicated to figure out who is being
quoted)
This issue has nothing to with private citizens communicating on the
Internet. There is simply no reason - none - to think that the FEC
should or intends to regulate blogs or other Internet communications
by private citizens.
http://www.nationalreview.com/tks/057891.html
``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
[/quote:258c6ff952]
Apparently 'something' didn't prevent it for the quoted speaker or
writer.
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas |
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| Greg Lee |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 7:09 am |
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Bobby D. Bryant <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
[quote:1cba776379]On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> wrote:
Quoted in National Review (too complicated to figure out who is being
quoted)
This issue has nothing to with private citizens communicating on the
Internet. There is simply no reason - none - to think that the FEC
should or intends to regulate blogs or other Internet communications
by private citizens.
http://www.nationalreview.com/tks/057891.html
``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
Apparently 'something' didn't prevent it for the quoted speaker or
writer.
[/quote:1cba776379]
It sounds ok to me. But it's helped by setting off "or intends to" by
commas, since it's a right-node-raising construction. It's not a
straightforward coordination of "should" and "intends to", because
those expressions are not of the same category. Rather, "regulate
blogs or other Internet communications by private citizens", which
is the raised node, goes with both "should" and "intends to".
--
Greg Lee <greg@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> |
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| Ron Hardin |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:19 am |
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Bobby D. Bryant wrote:
[quote:a45157cdf5]``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
Apparently 'something' didn't prevent it for the quoted speaker or
writer.
[/quote:a45157cdf5]
There's a word-processor effect that produces odd editings : the fellow
thinks that he can condense this and he proceeds to do so. In this case
he thinks that ``or'' distributes over the infinitive verb : aha, we can
factor out the ``regulates.''
But it's wrong if he bothers to re-read it.
That it reads wrong says something about how you in fact parse verbs.
--
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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| Greg Lee |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 2:49 pm |
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Brian M. Scott <b.scott@csuohio.edu> wrote:
....
[quote:3658678ef8]I don't know what you're reading, but it isn't the thread
that I see. *Ron* is the one making prescriptivist
statements about what's wrong.
[/quote:3658678ef8]
I interpret what Ron wrote as describing his judgments. The
examples he gave sound wrong to him. Descriptivist grammarians
do this sort of thing all the time. Often my judgments agree with Ron's,
but in this case they don't, as I said. But I didn't say Ron was wrong,
did I? How could he be wrong about his own judgments? Who could think he
was wrong, except someone with a pipeline to the god of grammar?
--
Greg Lee <greg@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> |
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| Brian M. Scott |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:38 pm |
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On 10 Mar 2005 19:49:52 GMT, Greg Lee
<greg@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> wrote in
<news:d0q8d0$6pe$1@news.hawaii.edu> in sci.lang:
[quote:66af39a670]Brian M. Scott <b.scott@csuohio.edu> wrote:
...
I don't know what you're reading, but it isn't the thread
that I see. *Ron* is the one making prescriptivist
statements about what's wrong.
I interpret what Ron wrote as describing his judgments.
[/quote:66af39a670]
Then you have a very short memory. Ron has frequently
defended his pronouncements in terms that are incompatible
with the notion that he was simply describing his
judgements.
[...] |
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| Neeraj Mathur |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 5:34 pm |
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"Ron Hardin" <rhhardin@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:42302914.7ABE@mindspring.com...
[quote:213dd202de]This issue has nothing to with private citizens communicating on the
Internet. There is simply no reason - none - to think that the FEC
should or intends to regulate blogs or other Internet communications
by private citizens.
``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
[/quote:213dd202de]
Slightly related, perhaps: what do you think of phrases such as 'The method
works well with some, not at all with others'?
Neeraj Mathur |
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| Ron Hardin |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 5:49 pm |
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Neeraj Mathur wrote:
[quote:6cba5a8e6f]``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
Slightly related, perhaps: what do you think of phrases such as 'The method
works well with some, not at all with others'?
Neeraj Mathur
[/quote:6cba5a8e6f]
It sounds okay to me, with a pause for the missing conjunction.
``Should, or intends to, regulate'' would pass my filter; but I think
it's still syllepsis actually, with a disagreement whether ``regulate''
is a to-infinitive or a bare infinitive. But it's sort of formal, suggesting
a cut-and-paste alternative anyway.
--
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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| Jacques Guy |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:30 pm |
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Ron Hardin quoted:
[quote:5b35383266]There is simply no reason - none - to think that the FEC
should or intends to regulate blogs or other Internet communications
by private citizens.
[/quote:5b35383266]
I could stomach it with a comma of salt and another of pepper, like
this:
should, or intends to, regulate...
but I prefer it with the intends as a side dish, like this:
"that the FEC should regulate... nor that it intends to". |
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| Peter T. Daniels |
| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:30 pm |
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Ron Hardin wrote:
[quote:d77c038b4b]
Neeraj Mathur wrote:
``Should or intends to regulate'' is wrong, but you might think it
would work, ``regulate'' being properly non-finite. Something
prevents the coordination, though.
Slightly related, perhaps: what do you think of phrases such as 'The method
works well with some, not at all with others'?
Neeraj Mathur
It sounds okay to me, with a pause for the missing conjunction.
``Should, or intends to, regulate'' would pass my filter; but I think
it's still syllepsis actually, with a disagreement whether ``regulate''
is a to-infinitive or a bare infinitive. But it's sort of formal, suggesting
a cut-and-paste alternative anyway.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
[/quote:d77c038b4b]
So all you're complaining about is the omission of commas? Jeez.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net |
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| Ron Hardin |
| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:48 am |
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Greg Lee wrote:
[quote:cbd99faf89]I guess I wasn't clear enough. There are no artificial boundaries introduced
by the conjunction "or". "Or" does not coordinate "should" and "intends to".
In "He should, or intends to, regulate his behavior", the "or" coordinates the
verb phrases "should regulate his behavior" and "intends to regulate his
behavior". What is special about the construction is that the first intance
of "regulate his behavior" is missing. It's called a right node raising
construction, following Ross. The intonation break at the position of the
missing "regulate his behavior" is a charateristic of the right node raising
construction (though the break need not necessarily be there).
This construction has been very well studied, but its derivation is disputed.
Various theories have been advanced by Ross, McCawley, and Gazdar.
[/quote:cbd99faf89]
I don't see that the ``or'' works that way. It seems to me to coordinate
``should'' and ``intends to.'' No doubt it's parasitic on either making sense
alone in the larger context but that doesn't show that that's what it is. It
could make sense in the larger context because you're inclined to coordinate
it with another verb that does.
``Try and see this'' in fact doesn't mean ``try this and see this'' but
``try to see this,'' the hendiadys coming from coordinating trying snd seeing.
--
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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| Douglas G. Kilday |
| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:04 am |
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"Ron Hardin" <rhhardin@mindspring.com> wrote ...
[quote:3b9946b094]
[...]
``Try and see this'' in fact doesn't mean ``try this and see this'' but
``try to see this,'' the hendiadys coming from coordinating trying snd
seeing.[/quote:3b9946b094]
Are you absolutely sure about that? It seems more plausible to me that the
"try and" construction (condemned by Gould in 1867, according to Mencken)
originated by dissimilation of "to try to" to "to try and", since "to try
to" is somewhat unwieldy phonetically.
In support of your coordination theory, do you have examples of synonyms of
"try" in parallel constructions? I always understood Horatio Alger's title
_Strive and Succeed_ to imply that striving precedes success, but if you are
correct, this means _Strive to Succeed_, with striving and succeeding being
coordinated. Instant gratification seems somehow un-Algeresque. |
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| Ron Hardin |
| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 5:54 pm |
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Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
[quote:d3471f3b08]``Try and see this'' in fact doesn't mean ``try this and see this'' but
``try to see this,'' the hendiadys coming from coordinating trying snd
seeing.
Are you absolutely sure about that? It seems more plausible to me that the
"try and" construction (condemned by Gould in 1867, according to Mencken)
originated by dissimilation of "to try to" to "to try and", since "to try
to" is somewhat unwieldy phonetically.
[/quote:d3471f3b08]
Of course I'm not sure. I'm staking out a position. It was the first example
that popped into my head, in support of the idea that coordination of verbs
is not underneath coordination of their respective expansions, but rather
a real coordination of just the verbs. I do think that ``try and'' survives
as genuine hendiadys, whatever its origin.
Another example pops up, ``[He can't] walk and chew at the same time.''
Or any verb pair that is equivalent to a third verb (chew and swallow = eat).
He chewed and swallowed his food ~= He chewed his food and he swallowed his food.
At least not usually. You could mean it either way though.
``Try and'' has drifted into the same situation.
--
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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| Peter T. Daniels |
| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 6:18 pm |
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Ron Hardin wrote:
[quote:1a579952f9]Another example pops up, ``[He can't] walk and chew at the same time.''
Or any verb pair that is equivalent to a third verb (chew and swallow = eat).
He chewed and swallowed his food ~= He chewed his food and he swallowed his food.
At least not usually. You could mean it either way though.
``Try and'' has drifted into the same situation.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
[/quote:1a579952f9]
The saying is "He can't walk and chew gum at the same time."
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net |
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| Ron Hardin |
| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:33 am |
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John Atkinson wrote:
[quote:3439072217]That is, the use of "try and", "go and", etc as alternatives for "try to",
"go to" applies *only* when the finite verb has exactly the same form as the
infinitive.
[/quote:3439072217]
``He went and did it'' is common.
--
Ron Hardin
rhhardin@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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