just "going through the emotions" (and "the")

[Laurence Horn]

On May 14, 2012, at 8:57 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> according to Barkley, _although_ I tend to agree
>
> Why not "… _and_ I tend to agree"? Or is the thought really, "It's
> merely the opinion of that nincompoop, Barkley, but, nevertheless, it
> could be the correct one"?
>
Because there's a contrast between my observance that this was an opinion of the sportscaster, rather than observed fact, (I'd just written "who they obviously don't respect", and I was trying to indicate that this was obvious to *Barkley*, not necessarily objectively obvious, like the fact that the Sixers were wearing red or that both offenses left much to be desired) and my observance that I happened to share this opinion (although I wouldn't say it was obvious to me).  As it turns out, Barkley's assessment was borne out, as the Celtics continued to play as thought beating the 76ers didn't really require much effort on their part and proceeded to lose the game.

As far as "the" goes, the Edwards case reminds me of the issue involving U. N. Security Resolution 242, in which Israel agreed to "withdraw from occupied territories" and not (after much diplomatic wrangling over the language) "withdraw from the occupied territories", which led to various attempts to revisit the dispute later.  In fact I heard a talk at a linguistics conference last June arguing that this was an intentional mistranslation of the original language which did call for withdrawal from *the* occupied territories (i.e. from all of them), but what I remember reading at the time of the Resolution was that Israel would never have signed on if that had been the language.  Ben or Arnold, was this something that was discussed on Language Log?  Talk about "it all depends on the meaning of the word 'the'"...

LH

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