The Logic Off Topic list

--- In logic-ot@yahoogroups.com, Dennis Gunn <dennis@s...> wrote:
> >hi dennis.
> >
> >you're not really suggesting that the meaning of "i got plenty of
> >nothing" is obscure??
> 
> I am not suggesting anything, I am telling you flat out that a non 
> native English speaker, from say Japan, would not know what what to 
> make of that sentence.  Furthermore he would try to apply the 
correct 
> grammatical rules to the problem of figuring out what the speaker 
> meant and would be lead to the wrong conclusion.  Communication 
would 
> thus fail because someone was not following the rules. I know this 
> from eighteen years of direct observation of non native English 
> speakers trying to deal with the nuances of the language.
>
> ...
> 
> Anyway your assertion that they have no more or less advantages 
than 
> "BBC" English" is easy to debunk.  In the case of your example to 
use 
> proper English and say "I have nothing." puts the whole idea across 
> in three words without any ambiguity whatsoever, even to a non 
native 
> speaker, whereas saying it the other way expands the sentence to 
five 
> words and robs it of it's clarity by denying the listener means to 
> determine whether the speaker is referring to an event in the past 
or 
> a current condition.

No, you are wrong ... "I got plenty of nothing" has a poetic thrust 
and nuance and carries information that is lost by abbreviating it 
to "I have nothing", which is a crisper, more focussed statement and 
carries a different implied attitude. 


"I have _plenty_ of nothing" suggests that the "nothingness" that the 
speaker claims to have is not just in one area of their life, but may 
apply across a range of experience. And the casual structure possibly 
suggests an air of resignation.
"I have nothing" clearly can't be a correct /literal/ statement on 
its own, so context is suddenly very important, and depending on the 
context, "I have nothing" might simply be the casual statement of a 
card player saying that they can't beat a particular hand. "I have 
plenty of nothing" would suggest that the card player felt thatthey 
were having a run of bad luck.  
More generally, "I have a whole load of nothing" suggests that 
someone may have a general feeling that lots of important things are 
missing from their life (perhaps no decent job, no prospects, no 
property, no money in the bank, no girlfriend/boyfriend, etc).
Using the more pungent "got" rather than "have" can then also give 
clues or cues about the social context for what is being said, and 
those might not necessarily be there because of ignorance, the 
speaker might be deliberately adopting a particular mode of speech in 
order to communicate that they are identifying themself with a 
particular social group or class (which might be relevant to the idea 
that they feel that they have "lots of nothing" in their lives).

And when George Gershwin wrote the line "I got plenty of nothing", it 
wasn't incompetent use of language on his part, he was using the 
phrasing to help suggest a casual attitude on the part of the speaker 
(who in this context goes on to say that they don't care about not 
having many physical possessions, because they have things that they 
consider to be more worthwhile).

I'm guessing that the Gershwin line was chosen deliberately, and that 
the poster probably thought you'd recognise it. 
Possibly an attempt at subtle communication that failed to hit its 
mark. But then (like you say) that's the tradeoff, use too many 
assumed known cusltural references, and someone who doesn't know 
those references might not have a clue what you are saying. The 
payoff though, is that if the people involved do have a broad common 
stock of agreed references, the communication can go broadband. 



> If you are riding on a Jet airliner do you want the pilot talking 
to 
> the Tokyo air traffic controller over a staticky radio to say "Hey 
> y'all ah reckon ah bess be comin to lite here directly as dem tanks 
> out der in dem wing got a whole lot o' nuttin in em"  or perhaps 
> would you prefer that he say "we need to land, we are low on fuel"?
> 
> If you are laying in an operating room with a bunch of surgeons 
> sticking knives in your guts do you want one of them to start using 
> rhyming slang?

For those technical comminications, precision (and the use of 
standard industry jargon) can be very important ... but it only works 
because the people involved are deliberately restricting themselves 
to communicating the status of a very narrowly defined set of  
parameters, with standardised Q&A patterns. Narrowband.
Is the landing gear up or down? Is the fuel light on or off? Are we 
about to start the next standard stage of a standardised textbook 
surgical procedure? 
It's multiple-choice stuff, where nuance and individuality is 
something to be avoided.

But for lots of other human communications, nuance is the thing that 
makes a lot of it worthwhile, it allows us to empathise with the 
other person by letting us backtrack from their statements to 
recognise an emotional state or subtle response that may not have a 
standardised name. It's that empathic link that tells us that we are 
sharing perceptions and experiences with another living, breathing 
human being and not just some computer spitting out phrases from a 
technical manual.

> >and their speakers use them as clearly and consistently and
> >unambiguously.
> 
> It may work fine until concepts start get complicated or until they 
> have to talk to someone outside their isolated group then things 
> start to fall apart.  It is not a coincidence that more affluent 
> groups within society have a better command of the language. 

They also tend to have the /power/ to define their own social group's 
usage as correct, and that of the less powerful as incorrect. Then, 
if you talk differently to them, it's /officially/ because you are 
supposed to be inferior or ignorant.
As in that "an Hotel" example I gave in another post this morning. 
It's use of language to announce social/educational background.


> Language is a tool and the better you use it the better it will 
> serve you.

You mentioned rhyming slang: that didn't come about because the 
people using it had poor language skills ... it was developed as a 
sophisticated mnemonic codeword system in London's East End as a way 
of allowing people to talk freely without infiltrators from the 
police or customs being able to understand them (or being able to 
buld a convincing court case around what they were supposed to have 
said). 
Back then, it probably served the speakers very well!  

 
> What is more arrogant: the idea that a language can be empirically 
> correct or the idea that a small group of people's ignorance of the 
> rules of grammar and the faulty constructions result are an 
> improvement on 1000 years of linguistic evolution.

Well, that's the point: The "rules" weren't invented from scratch, 
they evolved, and the rules that might be in your reference-books 
might not neccessarily be the ones that people in the population with 
something interesting to say are actually using. 

I once attended a lecture on business communications where we were 
told that all business emails ought to start and end with "Dear 
Sir ... Yours Sincerely ...". And I was made to waste a load of time 
and effort practicing my longhand scrawl because all written business 
communications are done in handwriting, not block capitals ...   
<sigh>

Rules change, and sometimes the "teachers" get left behind.

> You have it backwards.  Dialects come and go they die of their own 
> limitations or get morphed into something something unrecognizable 
by 
> each successive generation of speakers or they move between 
> populations and get distorted in ways the originators can no longer 
> understand.  Proper grammar on the other hand is very nearly 
timeless 
> and the very fact that it changes very little and very slowly is 
what 
> makes it so powerful and useful.

Well, a few years ago, the OED fnally had a clearout of old junk 
grammatical rules that they reckoned were only there because the 
people who prided themselves on knowing these things perpetuated 
them, or as "fossil" anomalies inherited from root languages. 

So as far as English is concerned, I think we've probably recently 
had quite a few official changes in standardised (standardized?) 
grammar, accelerated by email and the internet.
Suddenly a whole load of people are using text intensively for their 
communications and are looking at soem of the old rules afresh and 
saying: Why the hell are we doing THIS ?


> Trying to write up a complex document using dialect is a lot like 
> trying to build a building on a log jam in a river.  You might get 
> away with it if all you want is a temporary light shack but if try 
> anything bigger and heavier you will be in trouble and whatever 
size 
> you make it you can count on it being useless pretty soon.

Hmm ... do "standard English" or "BBC English" also count as dialects?
And I'm sure that some stuffy English linguists would count US 
Standard English as a dialect.