disappearing prepositions

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 26, 2004, at 11:45 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> At 1:26 PM -0500 9/26/04, Robert Wachal wrote:
>>
>> And what does the new preposition 'absent' have to offer that
>> 'without'
>> lacks?
>
> A legal imprimatur?  Evidently, most of the cites are in a legal
> context:
>
> 1944 Rep. Supreme Court S. Dakota (1948) LXX. 191 We think it clear
> that under this definition, absent any other facts, there arises an
> implied contract that the patient will pay.
>
> 1953 Federal Suppl. CVII. 527/2 Absent federal legislation upon the
> subject, states may, within limits of reasonableness, regulate the
> use of their highways...

etc. etc.

there are at least two questions here.  one: why did the preposition
"absent" arise in legal language?  two: why did it spread to ordinary
language?  the two questions don't necessarily have the same answer.

(for what it's worth, this "absent" appears in neither garner's Black's
Law Dictionary (7th ed.) nor clapp's Dictionary of the Law.  which is
to say that it's a term of practice, not of art.)

the easy answers are that lawyers wanted something latinate,
impressive, and technical-sounding to give, um, gravitas to their
language, and that non-lawyers wanted to borrow the authority of the
law in *their* language.  that is, it's all show.  i don't discount
these motivations, but (like dwight bolinger) i encourage people to
look beyond the obvious dismissive accounts as mere fashion, talking
the way the cool people do.  give people some credit for trying to
achieve their purposes as effectively as they can.

remember the fusses about "since" 'because' and "while" 'although'?
(the American Psychological Association stylebook still condemns
these.)  people who use them -- virtrually every living speaker of
english, i think -- make subtle and complex choices between "because"
and logical "since", and between "although" and logical "while".  they
aren't just confused.

so, i claim, it is with "absent" 'without'.  the point is that "absent"
is not merely a fancy-pants substitute for good ol' "without", but a
*more specific* expression.  "absent" expresses only a logical
relation, specifically a negative conditional: in brief, "absent X" =
"if X is absent" = "if there is no X".

other uses of "without" -- and there are many -- cannot be replaced by
"absent".  try it out...

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."  bizarro: "A
woman absent a man is like a fish absent a bicycle."

"Without seeing the full set of papers, I cannot rule on this
application."  bizarro: "Absent seeing the full set of papers,..."

"Without prejudice to the defendant, I must say that this is an
extraordinary ground for defense."  bizarro: "Absent prejudice to the
defendant, I must say..."

and so on.

"without" has a wide range of uses; "absent" picks out just one of
these, and so saves the hearer/reader the effort of winnowing down
interpretations.  it is more specific than "without", and therefore
more informative.

(think about connectives.  you *could* just string sentences together
with "and", but it's damn useful to have more specific connectives.)

the irony here is that people who rage on about the necessity of
clarity and subtle meaning distinctions in writing and speaking simply
reject attempts to further these aims -- so long as the relevant
expressions are innovations.  New is Bad, No Matter What.  (in other
cases, it's brevity that's at issue, in still others
regularity/generality/simplicity, and so on.)

in any case, the point is that the innovation does some real work, has
some communicative value -- and that communicative value favors its
spread.  people say, in effect, hey, that's a good thing to have; i
want it.  (in the case of the preposition "absent", the innovation
brings with it some stylistic/registral baggage that not everyone might
want to take on.  but, still, it's a potentially useful thing to have.)

go back to the "hopefully" thing.  why should this expression have
spread so rapidly?

because it's really really useful.  ("hopably" or "hopingly" would have
worked too; "hopefully" just happens to have gotten in first.)

the question is: why not just say "I hope (that) it will stop raining
soon"?  well, that version doesn't package the informational units the
way the speaker/writer really intends.  its syntax has "hope" as the
main verb, and the proposition that it will stop raining soon wrapped
into an object clause.  that is, it's framed as a report on the
speaker's mental state.  but normally someone using this sentence
intends to claim that it will stop raining soon, but to hedge this
claim as a hope, rather than a bald assertion.  the syntax and the
informational structure are at odds; what we really want is a version
in which the hoping is expressed as a dependent element, in particular
an adverbial.

ok, we can package the "i hope" stuff as an adverbial, namely a
parenthetical.  but then english syntax forces it to come later in the
sentence, as in: "It will stop raining soon, I hope."  this is ok too,
but it's rhetorically tricky, since it appears to assert the cessation
of rain baldly, then to qualify the assertion after the fact (sort of
like retro negatives: "It's will stop raining soon -- NOT!").  there's
nothing wrong with this, but it's a bit risky.

what we really want is something that expresses the hoping as an
adverbial *and* puts this hedge right up front.  we want a
sentence-initial speaker-oriented sentence adverbial.  "hopefully"
fills the bill perfectly.

my speculation is that once people heard a few instances of this use of
"hopefully" they said, in effect: now *that's* just what i want!"  and
so it spread.  almost as good as sliced bread.

its only defect was that it was new.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)