[Ads-l] weird "which"

[Laurence Horn]

I forgot to mention during this thread that Sara Loss at Oklahoma State presented an excellent paper on this “which” (both resumptive and non-presumptive) at the most recent ADS annual meeting in New Orleans, 
A change in progress: connective “which”  
I don’t know if she’s publishing it, but there was a lot of nice Twitter data she collected for it.  

And here’s an older (well, last-century) example I noticed a while back.  It’s from 1999, even though I hadn’t begin to notice these “which”es until much more recently.   In this weird and wonderful George Saunders story reprinted in the Dec. 30, 2019 issue,

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/06/21/i-can-speak

there’s this:

Or say your dog comes up and gives Derek a lick? You could make Derek say (if your dog’s name is Queenie), “QUEENIE, GIVE IT A REST!”  Which, you know what? It makes you love him more. Because suddenly he is articulate.

(Derek is six months old, but equipped with an “I Can SpeakTM” mask that allows him to speak, sort of.)

LH


> On Jun 23, 2020, at 6:41 PM, Bethan Tovey-Walsh <accounts at BETHAN.WALES> wrote:
> 
> Ah, okay; I see what you mean. Given what you’ve outlined, if it isn’t just an accidental omission of a word, perhaps this is a further step in normalising a kind of “conjunctive which”? It’s absolutely fascinating! Thanks for the example, and for unpacking how it differs from the type I cited.
> 
> ___________________________________________________
> Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
> 
> Myfyrwraig PhD | PhD Student CorCenCC
> Prifysgol Abertawe | Swansea University
> 
> CV: LinkedIn
> 
> Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg.
> On 23 Jun 2020, 13:35 +0100, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>, wrote:
>> This seems even weirder to me, Bethan. The examples you give are of a kind
>> familiar to me from my university teaching days in the late '70s.
>> Whatever the syntactical explanation, both "whiches" can be replaced by
>> (and defined as) 'but.' Exx. meaning 'and' are also possible.
>> 
>> But the current case is not subject to an exclusively lexical analysis.
>> The sentence might be normalized in these ways and maybe others:
>> 
>> 1. "Including a full-size leave-in elixir, which nine out of ten women
>> said made their hair appear thicker and fuller in just one week!"
>> 
>> 2. "Including a full-size leave-in elixir, and nine out of ten women said
>> it made their hair appear thicker and fuller in just one week!"
>> 
>> No. 2 is stylistically awkward but perfectly correct. But to get from one
>> of these normal constructions to the Viviscal version requires a
>> strange shift in understanding the meaning of "which." In No. 1 the elixir
>> is the focus; in No. 2 both the elixir and the comments are equally in
>> focus.
>> 
>> But the Viviscal version seems to focus equally on the elixir and on the
>> hair. It feels like something between subordination and conjunction.
>> A simple "and" or "but" won't fix it. And, as I suggested, it's appearance
>> in a TV commercial is, well, astounding, because it suggests that a number
>> of copywriters agreed that it sounded just fine.
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 7:09 AM Bethan Tovey-Walsh <accounts at bethan.wales>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I've noticed this one a lot online, apparently from U.S.-English speakers
>>> in particular. I suspect that it's a reanalysis of the standard "which" as
>>> a relative pronoun into "which" as a conjunction meaning approximately "in
>>> relation to which", "as a result of which", etc.. So instead of
>>> understanding "which" as the object of the main clause, it's understood as
>>> a conjunction linking a main clause to the preceding noun phrase. I've seen
>>> quite a few examples along the lines of:
>>> 
>>> "She told me to go, which I was not going to do that."
>>> "They said they were stealing, which my kids would totally not steal
>>> anything."
>>> 
>>> It seems to me that the step from "[noun phrase], which I wasn't going to
>>> do" to "[noun phrase], which I wasn't going to do that" is a fairly small
>>> one. I'd be interested to hear your opinions.
>>> 
>>> BTW
>>> 
>>> ___________________________________________________
>>> Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
>>> 
>>> Myfyrwraig PhD | PhD Student CorCenCC
>>> Prifysgol Abertawe | Swansea University
>>> 
>>> CV: LinkedIn
>>> 
>>> Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg.
>>> On 23 Jun 2020, 10:55 +0100, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>,
>>> wrote:
>>>> Weird to me, anyway, especially in a pricey, presumably carefully edited
>>> TV
>>>> commercial for a glamour hair product:
>>>> 
>>>> "Including a full-size leave-in elixir which nine out of ten women said
>>>> their hair appeared thicker and fuller in just one week!"
>>>> 
>>>> JL
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>>> truth."
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org