Context, context, context
Every so often I point out that sentences that are problematic in
isolation (because they seem ungrammatical, confusingly ambiguous, or
subject to an absurd interpretation) are just fine when they're viewed
in context. Supplying some linguistic context, or information
about the situation in which the sentence was spoken or written, or
facts about the world, society, or culture can make things clear.
Here's a simple example from my recent reading -- p. 251 of Atul
Gawande's
Better: A Surgeon's Notes
on Performance (2007):
This is a forty-six-year-old former
mortician who hated the funeral business with a right inguinal hernia.
Viewed in isolation, this is a disaster, the sort of sentence that's
likely to end up in a "Sic!" column. That final PP "with a right
inguinal hernia" is likely to be parsed as a postmodifier of "the
funeral business", or possibly as a VP adverbial of means or manner,
modifying "hated the funeral business". Either interpretation is
absurd.
But now look at it in context:
... consider, at an appropriate point,
taking a moment with your patient. Make yourself ask an
unscripted question...
... many respond--because they're polite, or friendly, or perhaps in
need of human contact. When this happens, try seeing if you can
keep the conversation going for more than two sentences.
Listen. Make note of what you learn. This is not a
forty-six-year-old male with a right inguinal hernia. This is a
forty-six-year-old former mortician who hated the funeral business with
a right inguinal hernia.
What makes the final sentence work (with the PP understood as a
postmodifier of "a forty-six-year-old former mortician who hated the
funeral business") is the contrast set up in the preceding context:
This is not a forty-six-year-old X with
a right inguinal hernia.
This is a forty-six-year-old Y with a right inguinal hernia.
That is, not
JUST an X, but in fact an X who is also a
Y. The structural parallelism between the two sentences guides
the reader to carry over the interpretation of the PP "with a right
inguinal hernia" as a postmodifier of X in the first sentence to an
interpretation of this expression as a postmodifier of Y in the
second. If you read the passage out loud, you'll probably set off
the PP in the second sentence prosodically, using prosody to indicate
that the PP is not attached "low" (as a modifier of "the funeral
business" or "hated the funeral business").
The title of this posting is a favorite saying of my friend Ellen
Evans. It's scarcely original with her, as you can see by
googling on it. Googling will, in fact, yield "context, context,
context" as
an explicit
instance of the
X3
snowclone:
To paraphrase the axiom which states:
the 3 most important words in real estate are: location, location,
location; the 3 most important words in the late 20th Century are:
context, context, context. (Jeff Gates, keynote address delivered
to the National Conference of Arts Administrators, Anchorage, AK,
October, 1996)
But with Ellen Evans you get more:
a CafePress shop, Ellen de
Sui Generis, with merchandise featuring characteristic Evansian
sayings:
Piffle;
Er, no;
FSVO (an acronym for "for some
value of", and pronounced like "fizzvo"); and of course
Context, context, context.
There you will find two items with CCC on them: a classic thong for
$7.99 and a mug for $10.99. The mugs make excellent presents for
your friends in semantics/pragmatics and sociolinguistics (or computer
science or postmodern criticism or ...). (Disclosure: I have no
connection, financial or otherwise, with the shop. I'm merely a
Friend of Ellen, and of Lars Ingebrigtsen, who set the shop up.)
A further riff on Ellen Evans: Ellen used to work in the movie
business, and every so often casually mentions having met or worked
with various famous people (fsvo famous). As a result, the
newsgroup soc.motss has for some time used the verb
ellen to mean 'make the
acquaintance of [someone famous]', usually in the perfect, as in
"Bernard Malamud? I've ellened him." Verb on!
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at May 1, 2007 01:34 PM