"certain" inThe First Noel

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:43 PM -0400 8/2/07, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Yup. It's a garden path sentence. The catch is that the obvious
>interpretation of "The first Noel", as referring to the first Christmas,
>doesn't work. Instead, I take it as referring to the greeting: The angels'
>first Christmas greeting was uttered to certain poor shepherds.

Ah, so you and dInIs are taking it as "The first
Noël that the angels did say..."!  I always
assumed the parenthetical reading as you describe
it below, although as you convincingly argue this
is indeed hard to sustain semantically.  My
Christmases will never be the same, what with the
new reading of "Noël/Nowell" as an interjection
which serves as the head of a relative clause,
not to mention that troll...

LH

>On checking the OED I see that it's not exactly a greeting, but
>    A. int[erjection]. A word shouted or sung: expressing joy, originally to
>commemorate the birth of Christ. Now only as retained in Christmas carols
>(cf. NOEL n.).
>
>Or an utterance of such an interjection:
>  B. n.
>     2. An utterance of 'Nowell'.
>
>... although the evidence for that is suspiciously circular:
>1833 in W. Sandys Christmas Carols, Anc. & Mod. 74 The first Nowell the
>Angel did say Was to three poor shepherds. 1894 Daily News 8 Feb. 5/5 The
>child..had been taught the well-known Christmas carol entitled 'The First
>Nowell'. 1909 K. TYNAN (title) The first nowell.
>
>
>To add to the confusion, the rhythm of the song strongly encourages a
>parenthetical reading of "the angels did say": The first Nowell, the angels
>did say, was to certain poor shepherds -- i.e., "The angels said that that
>the first Nowell [whether as Christmas or as greeting] was to certain poor
>shepherds." Try to make sense of that with the rest of the carol!
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>
>
>On 8/2/07, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>>
>>  >OED2 for "certain", a., n., and adv.:
>>  >
>>  >II. 7.    a. Used to define things which the mind definitely
>>  >individualizes or particularizes from the general mass ....
>>  >
>>  >"the first Nowell... was to certain poor shepherds" has always seemed
>>  >to me to have this use of "certain" in it; it never occurred to me
>>  >that there was a problem in interpretation. ....
>>
>>  >arnold
>>
>>  Me too.
>>
>>  -- Doug Wilson
>>
>>
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