Sacrificing factual fidelity for flow

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'm with Dave.  Extralinguistic knowledge makes the confusion you perceive to be a remote possibility for 21st Century humans.  Thus, there is an excellent likelihood that "Benjamin Barrett" is a 21st Century translation program rather than a carbon-based life form.

  I don't agree that your paraphrase is the "strict" meaning of the sentence. "Strictly," the sentence is ambiguous, but its ambiguity seems to me to be of the "gotcha" kind whereby the "common-sense" meaning is shown to be wrong and a remotely possible meaning is revealed as correct. Gotcha!

  The message in the "crawl" could conceivably mean what you thought it meant, but if it did I think the writer would have used different words, e.g.:  "In 1964, a consumer bought the very first synthesizer made."  Even that is remotely ambiguous in the opposite direction but again only in a "gotcha" sense.  One [i.e., "I"] would also expect another sentence or so elaborating on this unusual occurrence, e.g. "Inventor Gyro Gearloose said he was sick of listening to it."

  The putative confusion is forestalled partly because one's awareness of metonymy in cases involving manufactured items should suggest that it was synthesizers of the first commercial model that went on sale in 1964, rather than the unique first device created; and partly by one's knowledge that the very first device created is most unlikely to have gone straight to a consumer.  Technology doesn't advance like that.

  Familiarity with the genre also suggests that Ockham's razor is especially useful in the interpretation of crawl lines.  Unless elaborated, they are presumed to convey the simplest and most easily interpreted information.

  My guess is that your initial misinterpretation exemplified a dread "senior moment" (called a "brainfart" in younger patients).

  Or else a glitch in the program.

  JL

Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Barrett
Subject: Re: Sacrificing factual fidelity for flow
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ahh, I should explain why I find these to be so different.

The strict meaning of "The first synthesizer became commercially
available in 1964" equates the first synthesizer with the one that
became commercially available in 1964.

"The first commercially available synthesizer debuted in 1964" most
likely means that after research, the availability of handmade
laboratory synthesizers, model improvements, etc., a commercially
available was developed and debuted in 1964.

These describe very different product developments. BB

Dave Hause wrote:
> Aside from personally seeing no difference in the two meanings,
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Benjamin Barrett"
>
> The first synthesizer became commercially available in 1964.
>
> My understanding of this is that the likely interpretation is that "the
> first commercially available synthesizer debuted in 1964",
>

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