[Ads-l] weird "which"

Wed Jul 8 01:23:23 UTC 2020

Not so weird, because it can be interpreted as a false start.

Unlike the opening line of Bret Harte's "The Heathen Chinee."

I still say mine is the weirdest of whiches.

JL

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 9:15 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> 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
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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