Authorization: Who or what? (Plus: Tracing the origins of The Language Log)
All entrances to the
Fort River School
property, down the street from my place in Amherst, Massachusetts,
are marked with signs that read
UNAUTHORIZED USE PROHIBITED
Let's ignore
the apparent but perhaps unavoidable
redundancy and consider instead what the sign means. Does it ward off
unauthorized individuals, or does it militate against unauthorized activities?
There are basketball courts on the property. So, presumably, playing basketball
is an authorized use of the property. Does this mean that anyone can wander onto
the property and play basketball? Or must one first obtain authorization to do
anything (even authorized things) on the property? This is a serious concern
to area sporting enthusiasts, who can freely play basketball on the property
on one interpretation but cannot on another. It should also be a concern
to, e.g., Fort River schoolteachers (authorized users of the property) who
are interested in holding poker tournaments on the property
(presumably not currently an authorized use).
Note: The above note originally appeared in
WHISC (What's Happening in South College),
the new weekly newsletter of the
UMass Linguistics
Department. Both the idea for the newsletter and its name are
"inspired by" (swiped from) the weekly newsletter of the
UCSC
Linguistics Department,
WHASC (What's Happening at Santa Cruz), which is the work of Connie Creel.
The UMass newsletter is somewhat livelier than WHASC tends to be.
It boasts
pictures,
puzzles, and
general
observations about the department and its researchers, in addition
to day-to-day news.
But WHISC's style and tone clearly take their cue from one very special
issue of WHASC:
May 29, 2002. Readers of The Language Log
will not be surprised by the signature at the bottom of that page. In
retrospect, one can hear
its author
crying out for a regular outlet for
things like this.
Posted by Christopher Potts at January 14, 2004 09:40 PM