"As Well."

[James Harbeck]

Thank you for the excellent lesson, Arnold! Although I was not
intending to criticize use of "as well" or call it incorrect, you are
of course right that I was being unnecessarily sloppy. In my defence
I can only say that my email discourse style has been developed
perhaps too much on lists where a certain amount of liveliness in the
phrasing is valued more highly than technical accuracy. Naturally, I
should be more careful, especially since I'm going to be held
responsible for what I say.

At any rate, I didn't mean to call forth echoes of advice literature.
I don't cotton to such stuff any more than you do. Yes, I agree that
people simply have different choices; my phrasing merely reflected
the saliency of the choice for some people, and perhaps to some
extent my own response to seeing the same thing over and over again,
even in cases where to my taste it would be better phrased
differently. I know that I can't reasonably make inferences about
other people's mental states, but, for instance, if I see a person
consistently eating chicken and not beef, even if beef is readily
available and chicken requires greater effort to get, I think I might
be justified in saying that the person seems to avoid beef and
insistently eats chicken. Perhaps not; I can only report what I see,
but, while we're not in the business of psychologizing users,
characterizations of behaviour that make use of inferences regarding
mental state are natural, even difficult to avoid at times, and at
the very least can present a clear picture of the phenomenon as
perceived, though not necessarily as motivated. But I will be careful
to be more technical in future.

And thank you for reminding me that the two uses are distinct,
something that on a moment's reflection I see (and remember) but was
unsuitably allowing to fall by the wayside. A question on this:
Although they are different uses, does the acceptability and
commonality of sentence-final "as well" have a useful bearing on the
acceptability and commonality of sentence-initial "as well"? In your
experience, is it reasonable to expect that greater acceptance of one
is likely to correlate with greater acceptance of the other, or are
they pretty much independent in this regard?

With regard to impressions, yes, I was overstating the case, which I
ought not to have done. (Note to self: I've told you a million times,
don't exaggerate!) But, that aside, is there some room in this
discourse for presenting impressions qua impressions? Naturally, they
aren't hard data, and can be unreliable, but do you see instances
where they may be usefully suggestive, at least?

As far as hard data goes, if I have a bit of time, I'll see if I can
start collecting some data on this. Enough text passes through my
hands regularly that I should be able to come up with some data that
may point in one direction or another. I'll have to give some thought
to the best means of analysis in this instance.

WRT the "therefore" example, if I happen to know the writers well
enough to know that they want a clinical or formal tone, I'm probably
justified in saying so; if, however, the case is simply that the
register of the text in question (and the expected register of its
genre) is comparatively clinical or formal, may one reasonably expect
that those who use it probably want to be clinical or formal? If they
are using a more formal register, of course, they're not "putting on"
an appearance of formality, they're being formal -- is it incorrect
to say that by sounding more formal one is in that way being more
formal? As for clinical, I get to read a lot of "doctorspeak" -- in
documents such as the ones I handle, doctors and other medical
personnnel use medical terminology preferentially and may deprecate
phrasing that is more colloquial. Their use of the register in speech
and writing indicates that they are speaking with a presentation of
clinical authority; they use not just phrases such as
"contraindicated in hypertension" but also certain words such as
"therefore" with notably greater frequency (yes, that's not a number,
but that's another bit of data I can start gathering to back up my
impression, which I don't think is so unreliable in this case) as
part of the register, which is part of their self-presentation as
clinically accurate medical experts. It's not being "put on" except
for in the same way as they put on their scrubs when they get to the
hospital. So that's what I meant, which is actually pretty much what
you said. I don't think I'm actually singing from a different
songbook on this one.

I find it interesting that your reading is that "John is a
professional oboist, and his teenage daughter Sylvia plays as well"
avoids an ambiguity in "...Sylvia also plays"; to me, "plays as well
could mean "also plays" but could mean "plays with equal ability" but
"also plays" could not be read as entailing that she plays with equal
ability. That's what I had in mind: cases where the "as well" is
ambiguous but "also" would not be. Perhaps there are greater
differences between our dialects than I thought!

At any rate, thank you, Arnold, for the lessons and corrections. I
really do appreciate your knowledge, and I don't mean to be such a
pipsqueak.

James Harbeck

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