as such = "as a result; therefore"?

[sagehen]

>>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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
My take on this is that the "as such" attaches to the wolverine, as a
critter having the stated characteristics & being thus of little interest
to the sort of entity that might fund research. ( If pharma thought it
might yield an effective  appetite suppressant, e.g., money would be
flooding into its study.)
AM

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