[Ads-l] weird "which"

Wed Jul 8 01:45:29 UTC 2020

They can’t all be so interpreted.  A couple of earlier papers on it:

Rudy Loock. 2007. “Are you a good which or a bad which?"
https://www.academia.edu/1436761/Are_you_a_good_which_or_a_bad_which_The_relative_pronoun_as_a_plain_connective

Burke, Isabelle 2017. "Wicked Which: The Linking Relative in Australian English." Australian Journal of Linguistics, 37(3), 356-386.
https://tinyurl.com/yb95mxyg

Yes, these pun-based titles are almost inevitable, which we probably could have guessed that.  

LH

> On Jul 7, 2020, at 9:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> 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

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