stepgrandparents and relational ambiguity

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Jan 22, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: stepgrandparents and relational ambiguity
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11:12 AM -0800 1/22/09, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>> On Jan 22, 2009, at 11:03 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: stepgrandparents and relational ambiguity
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> At 8:48 AM -0800 1/22/09, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>>> On Jan 22, 2009, at 8:24 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> At 1:22 AM -0800 1/22/09, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>>>>> Brother and sister as well as uncle and aunt are ambiguous in
>>>>>> some
>>>>>> cultures as you have to indicate younger or older. I think
>>>>>> Cantonese,
>>>>>> for example, has a number of these. Japanese has the bizarre case
>>>>>> where "cousin" is pronounced as "itoko" but is written four
>>>>>> different
>>>>>> ways depending on whether the cousin is older or younger, male or
>>>>>> female.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would submit that these aren't actual ambiguities, but instances
>>>>> of
>>>>> vagueness or underspecification.  The standard identity-of-sense
>>>>> tests for ambiguity ("I have three uncles" vs. "I visited two
>>>>> banks"
>>>>> or "Neither Sally nor Beth can bear children") don't respect these
>>>>> differences in ways that someone can be an uncle or sister or
>>>>> brother-in-law, and the fact that other languages make a
>>>>> distinction
>>>>> we don't isn't decisive.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not familiar with those tests and have trouble seeing the
>>>> ambiguities in the samples.
>>>>
>>>> I often have the problem of trying to say brother or sister in
>>>> Japanese and because the relative ages are not provided in
>>>> English. I
>>>> have to either guess or else try to explain it without ruining the
>>>> point I'm trying to make. It would seem that my interlocutors find
>>>> the
>>>> story ambiguous, though, because it's not clear whether the
>>>> brother/
>>>> sister is older or younger.
>>>
>>> And if you're speaking French (or Russian, or German, or Spanish, or
>>> Italian, or...), you'd have to decide what your relationship is to
>>> me
>>> before you'd know whether to address me with the second person
>>> familiar or the second person formal.  But that doesn't make "you"
>>> ambiguous between the two in English, just unspecified with respect
>>> to that distinction.
>>
>> My point wasn't that "brother" is ambiguous in English, but in
>> Japanese. As I mentioned in another follow-up, the word "male
>> sibling"
>> in Japanese is ambiguous (if that's the right word) in Japanese. You
>> can say it, but the interlocutor is left wondering whether the
>> brother
>> is older or younger. In Spanish, it seems plausible that there is no
>> work-around for the second person pronoun, in which case, there is no
>> case for ambiguity (if that's the right word). BB
>>
> Even within a single language, I wouldn't agree that any ambiguity is
> involved here.  The fact that we have a word "murder" that entails
> 'kill deliberately' (among other things) doesn't make "kill"
> ambiguous between intentional and unintentional readings.  Ditto with
> "lion", despite the "work-around" with "lioness".  Or, for
> non-privative oppositions, the fact that we can distinguish male rams
> from female ewes doesn't make "sheep" ambiguous, or (worse) ambiguous
> to that subset of speakers who happen to be familiar with the words
> "ram" and "ewe".  ("Sheep" *is* ambiguous between singular and
> plural, I'd concede, but that's a different argument.  It's just
> unspecified for male/female.)  Or, getting back to relatives,
> "parent" isn't ambiguous, just unspecified for the distinction that
> marks fathers as distinct from mothers.

I have to agree with your point, but how does this differ from
stepgrandparent? Okay, one is the stepparent of a parent and the other
is the parent of a stepparent, but they are both stepgrandparents, no?
BB

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