[Ads-l] weird "which"

Wed Jul 8 04:22:37 UTC 2020

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 12:17 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> 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,”

Naah, there ’s a bunch of you.  I’ve been living with one for 43 years.  But that wouldn’t *really* prevent you from grokking the puns in question, including the Great Chicago Which Hunt (their parasession volume on relative clauses back in the early ‘70s, for the uninitiated)

> 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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