the temporal subordinator "since"

[Charles Doyle]

It's my impression that, in student writing (and even writing by academicians), both "because" and logical "since" are being supplanted by logical "as"--which is even more vigorously stigmatized in the handbooks, isn't it?  "As," like "since," can be either temporal or logical in its reference (so ambiguity may occur, occasionally).

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:22:49 -0700
>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject: the temporal subordinator "since"
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      the temporal subordinator "since"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>one of my students, doug kenter, is working on the choice between the
>subordinators "since" and "because" as markers of logical connection
>(reason or cause).  what a great many stylebooks insist on is that
>"since" is not to be used that way -- it is acceptable only in its
>original sense as a marker of temporal connection -- and must
>(almost) always be replaced by "because".  this is, of course, silly;
>logical "since" has been around since the 15th century, and is easy
>to find in "good writing".
>
>the proscription against logical "since" (and "while") is usually
>justified on the basis of ambiguity avoidance, but this is also
>silly: as many people have pointed out, it's extremely hard to find
>an example where, *in context*, there is any serious doubt about
>which of the two uses of "since" was intended.  with some work, you
>can concoct such example, but in real life the issue virtually never
>arises, so the proscription avoids a largely non-existent problem.
>
>actually, we've been realizing over the past week, real-life examples
>of *temporal* "since" are pretty thin on the ground, once you exclude:
>   (a) the preposition "since" ("since the beginning of the
>century"), which is always temporal;
>   (b) occurrences of "ever since" ("ever since the century began"),
>which are also always temporal;
>   (c) occurrences of "since" with time-measure expressions ("It's
>been six weeks since we've seen a movie"), where it is, once again,
>always temporal.
>
>there are probably more such restricted environments.
>
>(note, by the way, that "ever since" is another place where "ever"
>occurs with a universal reading.  here i refer back to a thread from
>a little while ago (12-15 september) on universal "ever".)
>
>it begins to look like, while usage advisers are trying to stamp out
>logical "since" (and preserve temporal "since"), the users of the
>language are moving in the opposite direction, by giving up temporal
>"since" (and preserving logical "since"), except in a few special
>contexts.  putting the idea another way, it begins to look like
>"since" is now primarily a logical subordinator, with some special
>temporal uses.  (indeed, there are some contexts where logical
>"since" is hugely preferable to "because" -- in speech-act
>adverbials, for example, as in "Since/??Because you asked me, I'm
>trying to grow a beard.")
>
>we still need to find out whether there is now this disparity between
>logical and temporal "since".  meanwhile, we know nothing about the
>history of the temporal subordinator "since".  it's possible that the
>first question has already been answered in the literature (the
>Longman Grammar has data, discussed on p. 848, that suggest different
>usages in different genres, with temporal "since" dominating logical
>"since" in all genres except academic writing and (to a lesser
>degree) fiction, but its counts include examples of types (b) and (c)
>above, so it's hard to know how to interpret them).  if the first
>question hasn't been answered, or if the answer is in the negative,
>then probably no one has thought to look at frequencies of different
>uses over time.
>
>all very speculative at this point, and we could be wrong.
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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