[Ads-l] weird "which"

Wed Jul 8 04:17:52 UTC 2020

> these pun-based titles are almost inevitable

Not so much, if you're a speaker of an idiolect that retains voiceless w. I
was amused by the crude attempt of the "Chicago _which_-hunt," till it was
pointed out to me that I may be the last, living native-speaker of English
to pronounce _wh_ as "hw," except in the case of _whoop_, pronounced
"hoop." Cf. cognate German _hupen_, as in the trallic-sign, _NICHT HUPEN_

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 9:52 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> 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
>

-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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