ESPN Sugar Bowl game

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Jan 4 18:38:36 UTC 2012


On Jan 4, 2012, at 1:11 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

> No. The QB could throw it long and complete the pass. "Throw" does not
> imply "catch".
> DanG

especially since the announcer was using "throw(ing)" before the results were known.  It's like the difference between, to adapt an example from Grice, "She tried to solve the problem" (implies lack of success, although the implication is cancelable) vs. "She's trying to solve the problem" (no such implication).  "He threw it long" may imply incompletion; "He's throwing long" doesn't.  And "He threw it long 15 times" just implies that not all of the passes were completed, not that each of them was incomplete.  I'm not sure i see a difference between "throwing" and "going" here.

LH
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: ESPN Sugar Bowl game
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> OK, the verb. But doesn't "throwing long" imply that the pass is
>> incomplete? Would it not be "going long" if we don't yet know the
>> outcome? Or am I just splitting hairs?
>>
>> VS-)
>>
>> On 1/3/2012 10:55 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>> "[The quarterback] throws long and… _incompletes_."
>>>
>>> --
>>> -Wilson
>>
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>
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