disappearing prepositions

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:23 PM -0700 9/27/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>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.


Note that "absent" does always seem to allow a paraphrase with "in
the absence of", it doesn't necessarily always allow that with
"without", nor (as Arnold suggests below) is it always a more
specific version of "without", which would predict such a
substitution.  Here's a naturally attested instance of "absent"
outside (absent?) a legal context that I just happened upon in class
reading for tonight; emphasis added:

"But there is another sense of meaning in which, ABSENT lexical or
syntactical ambiguities, two occurrences of the same word or phrase
must mean the same.  (Otherwise, how could we learn and communicate
with language?"

--David Kaplan, "Demonstratives", in Almog et al. (eds), _Themes from
Kaplan_, 1989.

The context is Kaplan's argument that we need to allow for
"character" as well as "content" in describing the semantics of
indexicals, content for how my use of "I" and Arnold's use of "I"
differ (have different contents, a la Kaplan, picking out LH and AMZ
respectively) and character being the respect in which they're the
same (have the identical character).    Obviously, Kaplan's "absent"
here =/= "without", but = "in the absence of".  Thus, as Dwight
Bolinger would put it, "absent" as a preposition earns its pay as a
lexical item, there being no one-word alternative synonymous with it.

larry

>
>(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)