But for (from ID TV)

[Laurence Horn]

On May 22, 2012, at 3:50 PM, Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700 wrote:

> You're certainly right about people getting things backwards. But while
> Dr. Phil's use of "predecessor" (instead of "successor") could possibly
> be excused as a slip of the tongue (despite his having repeated it
> several times)

Not a slip of the tongue on Dr. Phil's part, I'd think, as much as the same process that leads to people talking about inheriting traits from their descendants, or passing them down to their ancestors.  We've had threads about those.  Maybe feature toggling is the diagnosis.  This one ("but for a random search they were brought together" in the sense standardly expressed by "but for a random search they wouldn't have met") might be more like the inverse "let alone" we've also discussed ("I've never been to Paris, let alone France").

LH

> or maybe as just a defect in vocabulary, the ID TV
> example presents a logical tangle that I'm still trying to unravel. It
> wasn't that I was expecting "kept apart" rather than "brought together"
> but that I was taken aback by the plugging of "but for" into an
> affirmative cause-effect construction (i.e., it was only a random
> Internet search that brought the two together). My experience with
> "but-for" has been limited to contrary-to-fact conditions, as in "But
> for [if not for, except for] a random Internet search, the two [killer
> and victim] would never have been brought together" or "But for a random
> Internet search, the two would have remained forever apart," or as in
> your example "There but for fortune go you or I."
>
> Where are you, Daniel, if I may ask, that you get Letterman on "two
> weeks delay"?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of David A. Daniel
> Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 11:05 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: But for (from ID TV)
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
>       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: But for (from ID TV)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
>
> It's backwards, eh? "There but for fortune go you or I" indicates
> fortune
> intervened to keep something bad from happening. Not sure what that TV
> quote
> indicates, though it seems that someone is trying to say that a killer
> and
> victim were brought together, rather than kept apart, by a random
> internet
> search. Yes? People get stuff backwards a lot. I just watched a
> Letterman,
> with Dr. Phil as guest. (We get Letterman on two weeks delay here.)
> Letterman was saying that he figures if he is screwing up his 8-year-old
> son, it won't be his problem because he's old and will be dead. "It'll
> be
> the stepfather's problem." Dr. Phil twice used "predecessor" to refer to
> the
> stepfather, the one coming AFTER Letterman. "You mean if you screw up
> your
> kid now it will be your predecessor's problem?" After the first time, I
> kept
> waiting for him to correct himself, but then he said it again!
> DAD
>
>
>
> Poster:       "Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700"
>              <lynne.hunter at NAVY.MIL>
> Subject:      But for (from ID TV)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> ---
>
> "It was but for a random Internet search that the two [killer and
> victim] were brought together."
>
>
> Lynne Hunter
>
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