Y is X plus something
Another
abstract
for a paper that grew in part from material on Language Log. This
time it's for a conference to honor Jerry Sadock, May 2-3 at the
University of Chicago.
Again and again, it turns out that items X and Y that are widely taken
to be synonymous (differing at most stylistically) are in fact subtly
different in their semantics or pragmatics (as Bolinger maintained some
years ago). In many (though not all) such cases, X is general and
Y specific, in the sense that Y is semantically/pragmatically "X plus
something". A few cases:
1.
Diffcult is
hard plus a nuance or connotation
or implicature that "the need for skill or ingenuity is required" (
AHD4).
2. Jerry Sadock (on
Language
Log) has argued that
nearly n
(where n is a numerical expression) is
almost n plus the connotation "that
n exceeds (hence is better than) what was expected or hoped for".
3. Subordinating
once S1, S2 (
Once you finish editing this article, you
should start on a new one) is
after
S1, S2 (indicating temporal
sequence) plus a presupposition or implicature that the event denoted
by S
2 is somehow contingent on the
event denoted by S
1 (from Jason
Grafmiller.)
4. The sentence-initial contrastive connective
however is
but ('against expectation') plus
the connotation that it's specifically
PROPOSITIONS
that are in contrast (from
Zwicky
& Kenter).
5. The determiner
lot (
a lot of money/dollars) is the
much/many of extent (
much money,
many dollars) plus a connotation
that the extent is significant in the context (from
Grano
& Zwicky).
6. Motional
out of +
Object (
walk out of the door)
is
out + Object (
walk out the door) plus a
connotation of special significance for the thing denoted by the Object
in the context.
7. The restrictive relativizer
which
is the subordinator
that plus
components of anaphoricity and non-personal reference.
Most of these cases figure prominently in the advice literature on
English grammar, style, and usage, where the usual recommendation is to
consistently choose one of the putatively synonymous variants over the
other, on some criterion or another (omit needless words, avoid
potential ambiguity, avoid overused words, avoid ponderous words, avoid
colloquial or conversational items, etc.). The ubiquity of
Bolingerian differentiation in these cases, and especially of
general/specific differentiations, suggests that the forced-choice
strategy of many usage advisers is misguided, since it amounts to
depriving the users of the language of valuable expressive resources.
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at March 23, 2008 11:12 AM