Few would argue that ...

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:33 AM +0000 3/9/08, Michael Quinion wrote:
>The phrase "few would argue that" appeared in the last World Wide Words
>newsletter and was criticised by numerous subscribers as being either an
>error ("argue" used when "dispute" was meant) or yet another example of
>the dumbing-down of English that was leading to ill-thought-out, new-
>fangled, ambiguous phrases like this one.
>
>That it can be ambiguous there is no doubt, though context usually makes
>it clear which version is meant. From the Guardian last October: "few
>would argue that classical music still provides one of the most effective
>means of teaching musical literacy"; From the Grocer in 2005: "Few would
>argue that running a convenience store is an effective remedy for stress."
>
>Though there are examples from the late 18th century, the phrase seems to
>have become much more common in recent decades. Can somebody advise me:
>was it always ambiguous, or has one of the two senses crept in recently
>through some process of misanalysis?
>
I can't answer that one, but I suspect the circumstances for
ambiguity and misconstrual are endemic to the construction.  Thus "It
is arguable that p", and especially "It's arguable whether p", is
generally taken to imply 'it's doubtful/unlikely that p', while "It
is arguably the case that p" or "Arguably p", generally implying
'it's probable that p'.  The intuitions reported here are my own;
AHD4, for example, simply lists "arguably" under the heading for
"arguable" without a separate gloss, and gives "arguable" these two
rather inconsistent senses, of which I would maintain only the second
can survive the conversion to the adverb "arguably":

1. Open to argument: an arguable question, still unresolved.
2. That can be argued plausibly; defensible in argument: three
arguable points of law.

LH

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