conundrum

[Patrick Corness]

There are some (to me) slightly puzzling uses of English by native speakers amongst this correspondence, presumably intended to assist non-native speakers.
I beg to differ about Paul Gallagher's claim that, talking about factories, one cannot say:
"We built a big one, an expensive one, and a pasta one." Paul writes:

> Agreed. But nouns cannot be used with "one" the way adjectives can:
> 	We built a big, expensive, pasta factory.
> 	We built a big one, an expensive one, and a *pasta one.

On the other hand, I also find the use of myself instead of the anticipated me incongruous in the following statement

"Though you can, of course, always ask Paul Gallagher and myself and split the difference."
cf:
You can ask yourself
I can ask myself 
You can ask *myself

Patrick Corness



Patrick Corness, Visiting Research Fellow

Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds
blog: patrickcorness.wordpress.com


> Date: Fri, 4 May 2012 15:58:54 +0100
> From: John.Dunn at GLASGOW.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] conundrum
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> Perhaps I can wrap this up by saying that I agree with Paul Gallagher on point 1 and disagree on point 2.
> 
> I suppose this discussion has gone on too long, but it has raised two general issues that are of concern to this list.  The first is that if you ask ten native speakers a question about language usage, you will get at least twelve different answers, with no guarantee that what people (including myself) might say will correspond to what they actually do.  The second is that English is, unlike, I think, almost all Slavonic languages, a truly 'communist' language, in that it is 'owned' collectively by its users; it is very lightly codified and admits a great many variants.  This means not only that there are likely to be multiple answers to individual questions, with a different degree of acceptability to different speakers, but also that there is no source to turn to for a single authoritative answer.  I sometimes think that this concept is not easily appreciated by those brought up in a different tradition.
> 
> Though you can, of course, always ask Paul Gallagher and myself and split the difference.
> 
> John Dunn.
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Paul B. Gallagher [paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM]
> Sent: 04 May 2012 14:48
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] conundrum
> 
> John Dunn wrote:
> 
> > I am puzzled by this for two reasons.  The first is that I would have
> > thought that any noun indicating a substance or object capable of
> > being manufactured could be used adjectivally before the word
> > factory, e.g.: tractor factory, helicopter factory, sausage factory,
> > and hence confectionery factory, pasta factory.
> 
> Agreed. But nouns cannot be used with "one" the way adjectives can:
>         We built a big, expensive, pasta factory.
>         We built a big one, an expensive one, and a *pasta one.
> 
> Nor can they be used in this sense as complements:
>         We built a big, expensive, pasta factory.
>         The factory was big, expensive, and *pasta.
> 
> > The second is that when they [are] used as nouns, neither soccer nor
> > confectionery is capable of being qualified by an indefinite article,
> > and therefore it is surprising that decoding problems arise with
> > either sentence;  the indefinite article must here qualify a later
> > noun.
> 
> For "soccer," I agree, "a soccer" is bad. But for "confectionery," only
> MW's first definition is uncountable; the other two ("sweet foods," "a
> confectioner's shop") are definitely countable.
> 
> And what's more, a shop is also buildable; some might say that an
> elaborate confection is "built" as well. ;-) So if we say "to build a
> confectionery and a pasta factory," the reading "to build a
> confectioner's shop and a pasta factory" is perfectly plausible on both
> syntactic and semantic grounds.
> 
> Of course, I don't know which of these definitions exist in British
> usage; I only know the American definitions in MW.
> 
> --
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
> 
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