as such = "as a result; therefore"?

[James Harbeck]

>As such, relatively little is known about the life-history
>requirements of the wolverine."

This to me at first look seems an instance of a relatively common
misplacing of the modifier on a thematic rather than syntactic basis
-- meaning "As such, the wolverine is an animal about the
life-history requirements of which little is known." And the "such"
is that's it's an animal with a reclisive wilderness life-style etc.
One of the mixed blessings of editing a lot of prose written by
people who don't really know how to write (and who tend to use fancy
phrases to sound important) is that I get fairly familiar with the
kinds of misplacements and odd consrtuctions that might seem jarring
to one used to tidy English but are very common in some quarters.

One could also argue, though, that "as such" is being used to mean
"as a result" or "given that this is the case," and I can't argue
against that possibility; I think it's the sort of term that many
people use unanalyzed. I worked with (against) one writer who used
"to that end" to mean "as a result" -- quite a lot, in fact. So we
have two possibilities here to my eyes, and I'd want to see more of
the author's prose before I took a firm side on which is the case.
But using a modifier that attaches to the focus of the sentence
rather than what the "rules" of syntax would have it attach to is
common enough, and I've seen bigger stretches than this.

James Harbeck.

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