Grammar and logic

[obgyn65]

Please remember that some members - imcluding me - are not English native speakers. I do not expect other posters to correct mistakes but don't mind if they do. Some of these mistakes are just typos.

It's just that it gets pretty tedious when posters continually correct grammar and spelling of other members.

 

[FinanceDude]

This is an online blog. The grammar police should move along, nothing to see here, folks.........

 

[eytonxav]

Logic (not philosophy). A premise can be converted into an "if" antecedent by the logical rule of implication introduction, or an antecedent into a premise, by the logical rule of modus ponens. So there's a relationship. But they're not the same, because statements (where antecedents are) are not logically like arguments (where premises are). You can attack an argument by showing that its premise is false, but you can't appropriately attack an implication statement by showing that its antecedent is false. This is why I disagreed with the contention that the article under discussion had a false premise.

The reason I said Philosophy (Logic) is that college level Logic courses are frequently taught under the auspices of the Philosophy department, with some math dept overlap, unless we are talking about computer logic. Probably also some that hit on the linguistics area.

 

[GregLee]

"Have" alone strikes me as being probably more usual in formal speech, probably because it is the older construction.

I haven't been able to find out whether "have got" is actually a more recent construction than "have" alone to express possession, but I did find a study with evidence that "have" alone is much more common in the speech of young children than it is in the speech of their parents, and that children don't even learn the "have got" variant until they're around two: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:9cf1O6E_DmcJ:micro5.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msninio/Slow-mapping-have-srcd01.DOC+%22have+got%22+%22earliest+use%22&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjzX320fMLoqaE-0IHYxaIqZuW8encD_X_K3RoqyKPWOfujVLPG1eaYfgS_yRaCSedX9tWiZIeWuV0vfM9qB4iL_UfaIGEUGLf5J35JH5L9WqfDqJdUwulIVR50XBUd7qgcET1Q&sig=AHIEtbQIygXoY8QhbX5Tgi5U1LOYPCts2Q.

I would take that as suggesting that "have got" might be lost from English in the future.

 

[GregLee]

The reason I said Philosophy (Logic) is that college level Logic courses are frequently taught under the auspices of the Philosophy department, ...

Yes, but philosophers just consider logic to be a desirable skill for future philosophers to learn, I believe, at least for elementary logic. The higher logic, starting from the Incompleteness Theorem, might taken to be part of philosophy.

 

[W2R]

I would take that as suggesting that "have got" might be lost from English in the future.

I am thinking that maybe "have obtained" or "have acquired" would work in some sentence structures.

To me, "have" seems different from "have got". I could be wrong but my sense of it is that "have got" implies the transfer of whateveritis and "have" does not. If you have something, you could have had it from birth. But if you have got something, perhaps it implies that you didn't have it and then you got it.

But maybe I'm wrong. I wonder if someone would say, "I have got ten toes". In this sentence I would probably use "have" instead of "have got", but maybe others would use "have got".

 

[GregLee]

But if you have got something, perhaps it implies that you didn't have it and then you got it.

I don't think so; that would be "have gotten". Compare "I have gotten 10 toes."

 

[W2R]

I don't think so; that would be "have gotten". Compare "I have gotten 5 toes."

You're right - - that makes sense to me. We would say, "I have gotten 5 ears of corn from the garden", not "I have got 5 ears of corn from the garden", when trying to express that we have just gone out and picked the corn. And "I have gotten 5 toes" sounds a little grisly.

 

[FUEGO]

This COLA has no fizz? OR This COLA has gotten no fizz?

 

[W2R]

This COLA has no fizz? OR This COLA has gotten no fizz?

This COLA does not fizz?

 

[FUEGO]

This COLA does not fizz?

Ask not for whom the COLA fizzes, it fizzes for thee.

 

[W2R]

Ask not for whom the COLA fizzes, it fizzes for thee.

That it does, that it does....

 

[bbbamI]

"The ill gotten booty-or ill booten gotty" Hawkeye Pierce-MASH

 

[GregLee]

This COLA has no fizz? OR This COLA has gotten no fizz?

This economy has gotten fizz from the prospect of the COLA, so it has got some fizz, now.

The passives are all relatively bad, but some are worse than others: some fizz has been gotten, some fizz has been got, some fizz has been had. One idea about passives is that they are increasingly possible as the passive subject receives the action of the verb to a greater extent (or, the verb is transitive to a greater degree).

 

[TromboneAl]

The kind of logic errors that bug me are these kind.

The price of food has gotten too expensive.
​

More Americans watch NBC News than any other news organization in the world

The reason we do it is because we enjoy it.

​

 

[GregLee]

I finally found a date for the introduction of "have got". According to Frederic T. Wood, it goes back to the early 16th century: ‘Have got’ as a Substitute for ‘Have’

 

[TromboneAl]

Here's a good one. It is in my new pamphlet from Anthem Blue Cross:

"$4,100 per Year for a single Insured in a Policyholder only contract. Once your Deductible has been satisfied, no further Deductible will be required for the remainder of the year."

Is there any way in which "no further deductible will be required" makes any sense?

And what is with the randomized capitalization of different words?

 

[bbbamI]

And what is with the randomized capitalization of different words?

....because there is usually a 'definition of words' page...that's my guess.

---------------------------

Glossary, yeah that's it......

 

[GregLee]

Is there any way in which "no further deductible will be required" makes any sense?

Sure. Since "deductible" refers to a payment you make, it means you will not be required to make any such further payment.

 

[HFWR]

Sure. Since "deductible" refers to a payment you make, it means you will not be required to make any such further payment.

"Deductible" is singular, though it could consist of multiple payments. But by definition, once you've paid the deductible, there will be no more deductible...

 

[TromboneAl]

OK, maybe. I always think of "deductible" as a threshold or limit.

This is what it says on the sheet with the new insurance card:

"Your card will reflect your name, but can be used by any dependents enrolled in your plan."

 

[Nemo2]

Ask not for whom the COLA fizzes, it fizzes for thee.

"It's not fizzing because it's resting."

Monty Python.

 

[GregLee]

OK, maybe. I always think of "deductible" as a threshold or limit.

So do I -- or, rather, so did I. I just now made up the theory that "deductible refers to a payment you make" in order to make sense of the passage you quoted. It's not something I knew independently.

 

[Texas Proud]

So do I -- or, rather, so did I. I just now made up the theory that "deductible refers to a payment you make" in order to make sense of the passage you quoted. It's not something I knew independently.

The problem with language... different people think different thing with the same words....

I did not think of it as a threshold since you are always told 'you have to pay your deductible' when dealing with the docs... IOW, it was your share of the bill...

 

[GregLee]

From another thread:

I've donated my body to the local medical school; Mother did so also.

She donated your body?

There is a generalization of this "sloppy identity" between anaphoric expression (here "do so", meaning "donate her body to the local medical school") and antecedent expression used to interpret it (here "donate my body to the local medical school") which says that pronominal expressions which have local antecedents don't matter to the relation of identity required between antecedent and pro-form. So in this case, since "my" in "donate my body to the local medical school" has the local antecedent "I" (subject of the sentence), and "her" in the interpretation "donate her body to the local medical school" has the local antecedent "Mother" (subject of the sentence), the difference between "my" and "her" doesn't matter to the relationship of grammatical identity between antecedent "donate my body ..." and the interpretation of "do so" as "donate her body ...".