"soon before"?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 19, 2005, at 7:25 AM, i wrote about possible varieties for
"soon" modifying temporal "before" and "after.  i can now organize
the possibilities a bit more clearly (and there are six of them).

first, the example sets:

unmodified "before"
> (1)  an interview soon before the transfer of sovereignty
>        an interview soon before sovereignty was transferred
>        They met soon before midnight.

unmodified "after"
> (2)  an interview soon after the transfer of sovereignty
>        an interview soon after sovereignty was transferred
>        They met soon after midnight.

modified "before"
> (3)  How soon before the transfer of sovereignty was he interviewed?
>        How soon before sovereignty was transferred did he grant an
> interview?
>        How soon before midnight did they meet?

modified "after"
> (4)  How soon after the transfer of sovereignty was he interviewed?
>        How soon after sovereignty was transferred did he grant an
> interview?
>        How soon after midnight did they meet?

assuming that unmodified implies modified (that is, if you accept an
unmodified example, you accept the corresponding modified one) and
that "before" implies "after" (that is, if you accept an example with
"before", you accept the corresponding example with "after", so long
as the samantics is coherent), then accepting (1) means accepting (2)
and (3), and accepting either (2) or (3) means accepting (4).  there
are then not 16 possible varieties, but only 6, with the following
patterns for acceptance (+) or rejection (-) for the four example types:

A: + + + +  (1 on previous list)
B: - + + +  (2 on previous list)
C: - + - +  (3 on previous list)
C': - - + +  (3' on previous list)
D: - - - +  (not on previous list)
E: - - - -  (4 on previous list)

note that there are five patterns in which examples of type (1) are
rejected; this is where the discussion started.

i have since collected two more speakers who sternly reject (1) --
computer scientist elizabeth daingerfield zwicky and computational
linguist jane robinson -- but i haven't yet been able to explore what
the rest of the pattern is for them; we were all somewhat involved in
the care and feeding of opal eleanor armstrong zwicky.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)