Well, you wrote: “I personally find it unlikely that the negative particle got dropped for no reason”. Usually, when people say that they find X unlikely, they have some sort of reason for believing X to be unlikely. I am asking you to share that reason with us.
Example: “I find it unlikely that elephants can fly”
“Why?”
“Because elephants are heavy and they do not have wings.”
Now, if you were to follow this format, it would go something like this:
“I personally find it unlikely that the negative particle got dropped for no reason.”
“Why?”
“Because [blank]” (And then YOU would fill in the blank).
Is that clear enough?
There could be any number of reasons for a change in tone. But if the premise is that the phrase is sarcastic, and the alleged change in tone is not related to sarcasm, that would make it irrelevant, right?
Nah, you have to say, “I care an amount somewhere between slightly more than not at all and infinity” to really get that inscrutable sarcasm thing going.
[QUOTE=Killing Time;17696389
Is that clear enough?
[/quote]
Because it doesn’t seem likely to me that an inadvertent error which makes a phrase mean its opposite would gain currency and popularity for no reason at all but mindless repetition without anyone noticing. How much more do you need? Most “errors” that have gained currency have an underlying reason, like metanalysis, euphony, metathesis, morpholigical reanalysis (like “nuclear” becoming “nucular,”) etc. I don’t see a good reason why a “not” or “n’t” would be dropped and then it somehow became acceptable to the population at large when it means precisely the opposite. For this reason, I find it somewhat more likely that the origin and use of the phrase was originally intentional.
However, what I also see, and this is where your error origin comes into play, is that perhaps this phrase did originally come into existence from an inadvertent slip, but then stuck because of something like Liberman’s “negation by association” theory or something similar.
The relevance is that if there is a change in tone, we should explore why there is a change of tone and whether that relates to how we (or some speakers) say or interpret the phrase. To me, the fact that there is a change in tone for at least some speakers is significant. It means they are treating the phrase somehow “differently” than a literal reading. Why wouldn’t this be relevant? And maybe it is a form of irony being marked.
Once more: I said it was a statement meant figuratively. Your sarcastic and inexplicably hostile response about my use of “figuratively” clearly demonstrated – as I showed here with three citations – that you didn’t understand what “figuratively” actually means. That is all.
Do you not find it persuasive that something quite similar happened with “head over heels”?
There may be a different intonation, and I agree that this reflects a “difference”, but I find the use of that argument as support for some fanciful “sarcasm” theory to be perplexing as there are more plausible explanations. One usually hears the “could” version with the emphasis on the “care less” part – presumably reflecting the fact that the speaker is relatively unconcerned with what precedes it. In effect, as long as “care less” is out there, the speaker feels that the message has been delivered; what precedes it has become mere padding – a semantic-free connector between “I…” and “…care less”. Indeed, it’s not that much of a stretch to suggest that in casual speech one could probably throw any modal verb in there – negated or not – and it would be understood to mean the same thing. It seems far more plausible to me that this was originally inadvertent or just a phonetic shortcut than the idea that it was contrived.
Unless I’m missing something, it seems to me that the problem with the “sarcasm” and “irony” theories, as with the theory about the implied “as if …” is that “could care less” without the negation is really a rather ambiguous, wishy-washy phrase that has no particularly striking meaning.
Well, there seems to be reasons of euphony that go along with that. But, yes, I think there is more going on there, too, than simple repetition of error for it to stick as it has.
I don’t disagree with this analysis. That is, indeed, a plausible path to the phrase.
The “as if/like” theory reflects how I personally actually do hear and parse the phrase. Same as with “I could give a damn” or even the more elided form “I give a damn” to mean “I don’t give a damn.” Now, I can’t get into the heads of other speakers, but it doesn’t sound particularly unlikely to me that some interpret it as sarcasm or irony. Certainly, I have heard people intone it with clear sarcasm, but that usage is quite rare. It is not usually intoned that way.
Only if you meant it hyperbolically, and if so, it’s a terrible example of hyperbole. But apparently this is another important victory to you, so yes: Win for Wolfpup! Inasmuch as you were giving a nearly incomprehensible example of hyperbole, you were speaking figuratively. Booyah!
There’s a lot of folks who seem to think that if they pile sufficient disdain on Pinker’s sarcasm theory, it’ll fall apart. No. Pinker is among the foremost linguists, not just alive, but in history. There are intelligent reasons to disagree with his proposed explanation for the phrase, but a layman’s visceral skepticism about it isn’t one of them.
I “need” exactly what I asked you for. Your reason for your stated belief. Do you consider that an unreasonable question? I certainly gave lots of reasons for MY belief. It’s usually what people do when they discuss something. And they usually do it without becoming whiny and petulant about it.
There, that wasn’t so awfully hard, was it?
Now, we can finally move on. And I would have to say I disagree. Consider the term “hot water heater”. It is self-contradictory and redundant, and it doesn’t offer any aesthetic advantage over the more sensible “water heater”, yet “hot water heater” enjoys widespread usage among speakers of English. I can think of no “underlying reason” to have such a term. I imagine someone, at one time, thought “it makes hot water”, and thoughtlessly called it a hot water heater, not considering that you don’t need to heat hot water. Then others repeated the term, and it became widespread “Water heater” explains exactly what it is and what it does. The word “hot” is redundant. By your theory, the lack of an “underlying reason” would mean that term would never have gained widespread use. Yet it did.
But you DID explore it, and determined that it doesn’t relate to the hypothesis. So that step is finished. The next step would be to discard that line of reasoning.
There are two problems with your idea. First, it’s essentially misunderstanding language; second, it’s technically wrong.
People put “hot” in “hot water heater” to emphasize the actions of the machine: it’s a machine that produces hot water. Yes, it’s redundant, but so is the word “yes” that begins this sentence. Human language (as opposed to machine language) is full of redundancies that do a tiny bit to clarify and emphasize meaning. You might not aesthetically enjoy the phrase, but that’s on you; there’s no way in which the phrase fails at its fundamental job of communicating, and indeed–by putting the product of the machine up front–it probably communicates in a way that’s very slightly superior to the communication of “water heater.”
Secondly, you’re technically wrong. Virtually all hot water heaters heat water up and then monitor its temperature. When that hot water falls beneath a minimum threshold,
the hot water heater heats it back up to the desired temperature. Hot water heaters spend most of their time heating hot water. That’s not relevant to the etymology or utility of the term, of course, but it means that when you’re looking to criticize the word on a technicality, the technicality is also wrong.
Next up: why flammable is cromulent!
The idea that a couple of posters on a messageboard, shooting the shit about a term, are going to dispose of the research of a world-respect linguist is pretty funny.
Once again, I really thought I explained the reasoning. The new answer doesn’t really expand much on my original answer, but at least you’re satisfied with it, so let’s move on.
Yes, then we disagree. To my knowledge, I’m not aware of the phrase “hot water heater,” but it sounds perfectly fine to me, redundancy being a normal part of language, as seen in double negative constructions, “ATM machine,” and the such.
But that’s EXACTLY my point. Nonsensical or redundant idiom constructions are common and in widespread use. “The such” is a great example. “Such” in that usage is a pronoun, and pronouns do not require articles. You don’t say “the he” or “the she”. Yet, inexplicably, some people write it that way. What’s the “underlying reason” for that? There is none. The point of contention here is not whether something “sounds perfectly fine to you”; the point of contention is whether idiom construction can simply change without a logical reason. I contend that it can.
If that’s the point of contention, I’m perfectly willing to cede it–because etymology does not determine utility, and we should judge language on utility, not etymology. The question of how “I could care less” came about is interesting, but has zero bearing on whether it’s a good expression.
Surely the efforts to explain the genesis of “I could care less” as something other than a mistake (e.g. ‘sarcasm,’ ‘ironic layers of meaning,’ etc.) have been made for the purpose of supporting the usage as “good”…?
It would be very surprising if someone who claims they say the “could” version out of conscious intent, would also concede that the “could” version began out of ignorance or mishearing of the original “couldn’t” version. Isn’t it much more likely that those who want to defend their usage would consider that “how [the expression] came about” has a great deal of bearing on its Goodness?
Pinker is a scientist. He nowhere champions Appeal to Authority as a valid means of advancing knowledge. He would not approve your implication that lay speakers of English must accept his theories without question.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally don’t think so. I don’t think linguists are out there trying to come up with reasons to rationalize usages as “good” or “bad,” especially since they don’t really care about such things (ETA: well, they do in terms of whether something is grammatically acceptable to a native speaker, but that’s a little different than what we think of as “grammar.”). They just care about how language is used and the reasons it is used that way or came to be used that way. It may very well be that “I could care less” developed as an error. Wolfpup’s explanation for his reasoning that it originated as an error works for me, for example. It’s not my favorite theory for reasons I have given, but thoughtful people can disagree.
My guess on why some of these language professionals have said ‘maybe sarcasm?’ to give a ‘rational’ origin for “could care less” is that they do love language, and would prefer that laypeople put aside fear and self-consciousness when it comes to how they speak and write. And there’s a lot to be said for that point of view.
Even so, there is something lost when new usages detract from clear communication. As has been mentioned, when the first uses of “head over heels” appeared, it seems likely that those who’d been using “heels over head” objected that the new version slowed down communication, because listeners and readers had to scratch their heads (and possibly their heels) in confusion over what the speaker or writer was trying to say.
Today we have similar experiences when someone uses “infer” when they actually mean “imply,” or “simplistic” when they’re trying to say “simple,” or “comprised of” when they mean “composed of.” The listener or reader is distracted from the message itself, by the way in which the message is conveyed. This is not a gain for clear communication.
It’s true that there is less confusion over “could care less” than over those other examples, because unlike, say, “imply” and “infer,” we’re not dealing with two expressions that each has a legitimate use. The slowdown in communication that occurs because of “could care less” is more attributable to irritation than to actual confusion. ^_~
I’ll be sure to pass on your comments to my colleagues and good friends in the cognitive science community who know Steven Pinker personally and collaborate, socialize, and argue with him regularly. I’m sure they’ll be pleased that some random poster on the Internet holds him in such fawning esteem!
For me, that’s the wrong way to think about language. Language use doesn’t need defending on logical grounds; it should be supported or attacked only on grounds of utility (okay, and aesthetics, but that’s far more complicated, and not at all what wolfpup and others appear to mean when they talk about aesthetics). I’m sure there are plenty of examples of words migrating among languages and dialects due to misunderstandings; I find those delightful, and as long as they communicate successfully now, I’m happy to use them.
My problem with the slurring theory is that it doesn’t match how I think people slur. It’d be an interesting experiment–perhaps you can try it–to ask a bunch of people to say, “I couldn’t care less” while slurring. When I say it, what comes out is something like
If I slur, “I could care less,” it comes out as
What disappears in the “couldn’t care less” isn’t the /n/, it’s the /d/ and the /t/. The /n/ remains. There’s no way that I’d slur “couldn’t care less” into “could care less.” When I try to slur that away, my tongue trips up.
Again, this is my own slurred patterns–do your own differ?
It’s precisely because he’s a scientist–specifically, a linguist–that appealing to his authority in the context of a discussion of linguistics is not a fallacious argument. Note carefully that I didn’t say his opinion is infallible; I said specifically the opposite. What I deride is the suggestion that his research can be contradicted by shit-shooting on a website. When you’re confronted wtih a world-renowned expert in a subject who has conducted research on a facet of that subject, you contradict the expert with better research, not with truthiness.
I agree there. As for “infer” and “imply” that’s kind of interesting to me, as I also twinge every time I hear it used incorrectly. However, my neighborhood dialect has the same issues with “borrow” and “lend” and it doesn’t bother me there, and it’s a similar sort of non-standard use. I sometimes wonder why that is. (That is, why do I twinge at one usage, but not the other.) These are interesting questions to me.
Don’t be obtuse. Ask them if he’s a world-renowned expert, as I said. Ask them if they think your Internet shit-shooting suffices to knock down his theories. Respecting a body of work is not fawning, it’s recognizing the scientific underpinnings of the Enlightenment.
Edit: and if you’re still confused why you sense hostility from me, you may wish to reconsider your own word choice. Folks who read my respect for an expert and tell me I’m fawning don’t inspire fuzzy feelings from me for their fuzzy thinking.
