[Ads-l] Q: "lumping the team ... much chance ..."?

[Laurence Horn]

> On Dec 15, 2016, at 4:13 PM, Joel Berson <berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
> 
> The only thing I can make of the "lumping" is that the Giants are "tied with [other teams in having]  the fifth-best record in the NFL".  But (1) that has nothing to do with "[not] much chance of doing damage in the postseason”;

Right; he’s trying to do too many things in one sentence.

> and (2) the Giants are not tied with other teams having the fifth-best record in the NFL but are all alone in that respect.

Well, that one is easy.  There are four teams with better records (Dallas and New England at 11-2, Kansas City and Oakland at 10-3); the Giants and one other team, Detroit (who they play on Sunday), are indeed tied for the fifth-best record at 9-4.  So we can lump the Giants with the Lions.  But that doesn’t seem to help.  I guess if we don’t like it, we can lump it.

LH


> 
> 
>      From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
> Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2016 1:49 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Q: "lumping the team ... much chance ..."?
> 
> It’s “lumping” that’s weird here.  The sense, I assume, is essentially
> 
> ‘’…they [the Giants, because of the imbalance between their strong defense and inconsistent offense] have given observers pause in terms of granting the team tied with [others in having] the fifth-best record in the NFL much chance of doing damage…”
> 
> The “give…pause” has the negativity required for “much chance”.  But how “lumping” might mean “granting” I can’t say.  And it’s still pretty clumsy in terms of the syntax.
> 
> LH
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 15, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Joel Berson <berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
>> 
>> From Yahoo Sports, Eric Edholm, Shutdown Corner, Dec 14, 2016, 12:06 PM:
>> 
>> The 9-4 New York Giants are a mystery wrapped in an enigma, or something along those lines, and they have given observers a lot of pause in terms of lumping the team tied with the fifth-best record in the NFL much chance of doing damage in the postseason.
>> 
>> "lumping the team ... much chance of doing damage"?
>> 
>> Joel
>> 
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