Ive
been thinking about breaking fingers again.
What
follows really isnt an argument for anything, Im just collecting data for the
fun of it.
As
most linguists and many philosophers know, one of the best way to test whether
a word (or perhaps better a particular string of sounds or letters) is
ambiguous is by testing its inferential role. We can infer that bat is
ambiguous from the fact that (3) doesnt follow from (1) and (2). (To cover
some tracks here, the inference in question is abductive not deductive, there
might be other explanations for the failure of the inference.)
(1) Jack owns a bat.
(2) Jill owns a bat.
(3) Jack and Jill each own a bat.
If (1)
is true because Jack owns one of the bats that flies, and (2) is true because
Jill owns one of the bats that you swing ballwards, then (3) will not be true.
At best, (3) will sound like a kind of cheap wordplay, a zeugma. Compare the
inference (4) and (5) to (6).
(4) Jack has a cousin.
(5) Jill has a cousin.
(6) Jack and Jill each have a cousin.
Assume
that Jacks only cousin is female, and Jills only cousin is male. In that case
I think (6) is still perfectly true, certainly this case poses no problem for
the inference from (4) and (5) to (6). And thats some evidence against the
person who argues that cousin is ambiguous in English between male cousin and
female cousin.
(Why
might someone argue this? Well, maybe someone read Kripke on Donnellan and concluded
that whenever there are two ways for a predicate to be satisfied, and that most
other languages have different predicates for objects that satisfy the
predicates in those two ways, then the word is ambiguous. And maybe that
someone noted that in many languages, perhaps most, different words are used
for male cousins and female cousins. An understandable error, though one that
wouldnt have been made by someone reading John Lyonss 1977 book Semantics.)
Anyway,
thats all preparatory, because as I said Im just collecting data here. The
main point so far is that (3) and (6) have a different sound, (3) sounds odd,
but (6) sounds fine. What I want to know is whether the following sentences
sound more like (3) or like (6).
Our
first example will be about a Green Bay Packers game. It was an unfortunate day
for the Packers receivers – the combination of unseasonal Missouri cold and
Brett Favre throwing the ball even harder than usual meant that several of them
ended up with very sore hands. The most unfortunate was poor Terry Glenn, who
broke two fingers catching a ball on a short slant in the second quarter. They
were the fourth and fifth fingers Favre had broken that season, though which
was the fourth and which the fifth was never quite clear, letting Favre extend
his record for the most consecutive seasons with at least five broken fingers.
On the same play, Ahman Green executed a frankly hopeless block on a rushing Cardinals
linebacker, and, coincidentally enough, also ended up with two broken fingers.
I hope
you agree, dear reader, that (7) through (10) are all true in the game as
described.
(7) Brett Favre broke two fingers.
(8) Terry Glenn broke two fingers.
(9) Ahman Green broke two fingers.
(10) Terry Glenn broke two fingers, and so did
Ahman Green.
But what
do we say of (11) and (12)?
(11) Brett Favre broke two fingers, and so did
Ahman Green.
(12) Brett Favre broke two fingers, and so did Terry
Glenn.
Serious
philosophical question. If (10) is acceptable, and (11) and (12) are not, is
that to be explained (a) in terms of an ambiguity in break, or (b) in terms
of an ambiguity in the quantified phrase a finger (presumably the ambiguity
rests on the implicit quantifier restriction) or (c) in some other way.
Less
serious philosophical question. If (12) is somehow less acceptable than (11),
which I think is what I think, what oh what could explain that?
By the
way, I had my largest ever hit count yesterday. If I had to guess, Id say that
reinforcing behaviour like writing rude comments about allegedly serious
philosophical work is going to have consequences.