[lit-ideas] Re: Ownership and the possessive case
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 19:44:16 -0700
JL wrote
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers".
It's not ungrammatical, at least not in any serious way -
---
But you'll grant it's enthymematic.
No, I won't. 'Enthymematic,' an obscure word that I had to look up in
the OED, is said of certain arguments, which turn out to be enthymemes,
a roundabout way of saying of them that they are lacking a premise
necessary for them to be gültig. Notice that I say, 'a premise,' for
although in kindergarten logic, one is taught to remedy enthymes like this
All Fs are Gs.
[ ]
All Fs are Ws
in other cases, the missing premise may be a matter of conjecture.
In another possible world sentences may be enthymematic (although they
cannot be enthymemes in this one).
Surely it's "threaten _to kill_" which is meant there.
Surely?
(Perhaps injure, hurt? cfr. the scale of implicature, <hurt, injure,
kill>).
'The boss threatened to fire Smith if he didn't stop taking three-hour
lunch breaks.'
(Whereupon Smith is found dead.)
'The water threatened to rise over the levee.'
(One tribe's pathetic fallacy is another tribe's idiom.)
Robert Paul
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