as such = "as a result; therefore"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Talk of sheep, goats, and wombats brought to mind this interesting ex. of "as such," which in the light of earlier discussion seems to me rather ambiguous.

  From a leaflet published by the Wolverine Foundation out in Idaho:

  "Our lack of familiarity with this medium-sized carnivore is largely due to its reclusive wilderness life-style, low population densities, and a general lack of economic importance. As such, relatively little is known about the life-history requirements of the wolverine."

  To me, this first looked like a semantic error, with "as such" functioning as a synonym for "therefore," an innovation, as has been noted, worthy of lamenting and gnashing of teeth. Conceivably, however, it is just a misplaced modifier. The writer may have intended to say,

  "Relatively little is known about the life-history requirements, as such, of the wolverine."

  The reason I mention this is that the undeniable existence of _as such_  "therefore" may be partly explained by such seemingly ambiguous exx..  Even if the writer intended the phrase to mean "therefore" (which the drift of the paragraph certainly suggests to me is the case), sentences exhibiting initial "as such" may have helped popularize, or even create, the erroneous new sense.

  JL


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