# "You didn't...?" in the courtroom **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 5, 2018, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919 "2018-01-05T15:22:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jim\_Peebles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Jim\_Peebles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_Peebles)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/21 "2018-01-06T17:05:45Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Testimony in US courts is normally handled in ordinary English by people who have a decent understanding of the language as it’s used. If testimony is actually unclear, the judges and lawyers involved will just ask for clarification to be sure. Testimony simply isn’t normally handled by the weird hyper-literal, single-definition parsing that some people apply to message board posts, and a lawyer trying to force a weird interpretation of clear, ordinary English answers like those in the OP will probably end up getting a contempt of court citation from the judge for doing so. Someone answering the question: You didn’t X? under oath might even realize the context makes a “no” translate to “I did not X” but they might be “weird hyper-literal, single-definition parsing” minded and so think technically under oath they have to answer “yes”, and be too nervous and intimidated to try to bring the issue up. Someone also might have weird body language and their answer in response to such a question might be read as the opposite of what they meant by both the judge and the jury, since the interpretation is context sensitive and they are so socially awkward. Any subset of people in the court room could be on a different page about what the context is. Perhaps we should consider: why go with a context sensitive “You didn’t X?” when it is a trivial translation to an equivalent NOT context sensitive “Did you X?” ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/22 "2018-01-06T17:42:07Z")
> [@Jim\_Peebles](#): > > Someone answering the question: > You didn’t X? > under oath might even realize the context makes a “no” translate to “I did not X” but they might be “weird hyper-literal, single-definition parsing” minded and so think technically under oath they have to answer “yes”, and be too nervous and intimidated to try to bring the issue up. But everyone else in the courtroom has the context, so if his response to “you didn’t X” doesn’t match up with the earlier sentence, then someone asks a clarifying question and the ambiguity is removed. Each individual line of testimony doesn’t have to stand on it’s own. > [@](#): > > Perhaps we should consider: why go with a context sensitive “You didn’t X?” when it is a trivial translation to an equivalent NOT context sensitive “Did you X?” Like I said, testimony is done in English, not in messageboard-pedantese. People use language that’s understood by actual people, they don’t try to make it stand up to weird context-free analysis on message boards. If this is really something we should consider, how many cases are there of this phrasing causing an actual issue in court? I suspect the answer is zero or close enough to zero to be insignificant. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/23 "2018-01-06T19:19:30Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Really? I doubt that. How do you refer to multiple pieces of furniture? “Them” is the proper plural of “it” in the accusative case. > > Question: “We’re having a party, but need more chairs. Do you have any card table chairs you can lend us?” > > Answer: “Yes I have four you can borrow.” > > Request: “Please remember to bring \_\_\_\_” > You’re going with “it” rather than “Them” in that sentence? "We bought new furniture.’ “Really? Can I see them?” It’s a plural noun. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/24 "2018-01-06T22:10:23Z")
English is not parsed by computer programmers in court. What of the case (common in African American English) of using a double negative as an intensifier? “Ain’t no way I killed her!” Clearly means “I absolutely did not kill her!”, and any lawyer attempting to transform that into “I didn’t not kill her” (ie, a confession) would be very unlikely to be taken seriously. English has quirks, and lawyers are alert to making sure there is clarity. If I asked, “You didn’t go to the shop, did you?”, and the witness said “No”, everyone would take that as an assertion that the witness did not go to the shop. If the witness said “Yes”, then I would ask a clarifying question, such as “You’re agreeing you did not go to the shop?”, to which a witness would answer, “Yes, I did not go to the shop”, or say “No, I am saying I went to the shop.” No real difficulty arises in practice. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/25 "2018-01-06T23:54:25Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > "We bought new furniture.’ > > “Really? Can I see them?” > > It’s a plural noun. > > Regards, > Shodan I believe you mean furniture is a collective noun. The same collective noun can be singular or plural depending on its use. In the original context here of cutting the furniture up, I’d say either it or them is perfectly fine depending on the specific usage. As you didn’t give a precise quote of the defendant and we don’t know things like for example was all the furniture together or in different rooms, I’d be hard pressed to say the defendant’s use of “them” must not have been referring to the furniture. You may well be correct that this was decided by the jury. But my comment was more general that you claimed to never have heard furniture taking a “them” pronoun. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2018, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/26 "2018-01-07T00:19:53Z")
> [@Noel\_Prosequi](#): > > No real difficulty arises in practice. And yet “[I want a lawyer, dog](https://loweringthebar.net/2017/11/lawyer-dog.html)” was interpreted by an actual judge as asking for a canine lawyer. There are other issues that I won’t bring up here, but this is literally what the judge said. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2018, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/27 "2018-01-07T00:26:59Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > "We bought new furniture.’ > > “Really? Can I see them?” > > It’s a plural noun. Agreed. I can’t imagine ever saying “Can I see them?” in that situation. Most likely I’d say “Can I see?” but, if I needed to use a pronoun, I’d definitely use “it”: “He got some new furniture. It looks pretty nice.” I’m only aware of collective nouns being treated as plural if (1) each member is acting individually or (2) UK English. If you actually name the furniture, that changes things. “He got some new furniture, a couple nice chairs. They look really nice.” ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2018, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/28 "2018-01-07T00:44:16Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And yet “[I want a lawyer, dog](https://loweringthebar.net/2017/11/lawyer-dog.html)” was interpreted by an actual judge as asking for a canine lawyer. > > There are other issues that I won’t bring up here, but this is literally what the judge said. Not sure how that’s relevant to this thread - it has nothing to do with testimony during a trial and parsing it, but instead what happened during police questioning of a suspect. Cops playing ‘oh I don’t understand’ games with suspects when they don’t have a lawyer is something that is pretty common, but doesn’t have much to do with trial testimony that has a defense lawyer, prosecution lawyer, and judge involved. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2018, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/29 "2018-01-07T03:09:59Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > I believe you mean furniture is a collective noun. The same collective noun can be singular or plural depending on its use. Actually, I believe it’s a [mass noun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun), or non-count noun. Mass nouns are by definition always singular (notwithstanding alternative connotations). But this example could easily have been more about immediacy of pronoun reference, than anything. If intervening discourse occurred (between the pronoun _them_ and its referent, _furniture_), such as the word _chairs_, then the pronoun reference might need to be clarified–in fact, should be clarified, by a competent defense attorney. Courtroom discourse–as mentioned above by **pantastic** , **Shodan** , and **Noel Prosequi** , does not occur in isolated chunks of one or two turns. The whole implication of the OP is that language is somehow universally governed by mindless gate logic or something, which is almost a willful effort to completely ignore its very nature. In English discourse, a normal one-word confirmation to a negative question is _no_, because it implies auxiliary support. To contradict a negative question, speakers use yes, and tend to use the auxiliary support: Confirmation: \*A: Didn’t you wash the dishes? B: No. \*[the respondent doesn’t need to use auxiliary support (i.e., _I didn’t_)] Contradiction: _A: Can’t you speak Spanish? B: Yes, I **can**._ The pronunciation of the auxiliary (here _can_) is usually marked by higher intonation and stress. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2018, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/30 "2018-01-07T05:28:36Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Like I said, testimony is done in English, not in messageboard-pedantese. People use language that’s understood by actual people, they don’t try to make it stand up to weird context-free analysis on message boards. But the thing is, negative questions do cause misunderstandings sometimes in the real world. It’s a real issue with modern English, not just something invented by messageboard pedants. > [@](#): > > If this is really something we should consider, how many cases are there of this phrasing causing an actual issue in court? I suspect the answer is zero or close enough to zero to be insignificant. Agree with this though. Before I could support the OP’s suggestion of action I think there should at least be an example of this causing an issue in a real case. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/32 "2018-01-08T09:05:37Z")
I am curious here about what normally happens in real live courts, versus the memes we see on TV shows all the time. We see lawyers asking questions like these, and then demanding that the witness answer with only one word “Yes” or “No”. Sometimes we see lawyers asking complex multi-part questions (apparently, Senator Joe McCarthy did this at his hearings). We see lawyers trying to browbeat witnesses like that. Is any of that allowed in real life? If a lawyer asks a Yes/No question, is the witness compelled to answer with just the one word “Yes” or “No”. What happens if the witness answers with a complete sentence like “Yes I did” or “No I didn’t”? The TV meme is that the lawyer refuses to accept that answer and demands a simple Yes or No, and the judge just sits there silently. Does this actually play like this in real life? Do judges ever intervene? Should they? Should it be up to the opposing counsel to object first? Is it the opposing counsel’s fault if he doesn’t raise an objection? ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/33 "2018-01-08T10:09:08Z")
No. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/34 "2018-01-08T10:19:07Z")
😃 To clarify, generally speaking a witness is permitted to clarify something s/he has said. The evidence being given is by the witness, not the lawyer. The exception are when i) witness has being rambling way too much already and the lawyer is attempting to get back on track or ii) when anything beyond “Yes”/“No” is irrelevant or not necessary. A rare case. The point of evidence is to prove/disprove a fact in issue. Trying this stunt does not further that. Plus in Cross, lawyers are delighted if a witness starts saying more than necessary, more chances to find gaps on evidence. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/35 "2018-01-08T11:15:29Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I am curious here about what normally happens in real live courts, versus the memes we see on TV shows all the time. When I was called to testify in a court case, the lawyer who summoned my was a real estate lawyer trying her first case. I was pissed off at having been subpoenaed, so I was a bit surly on the stand, answering each question with a curt “yes”, “no”, or “I don’t recall”. When she tried to editorialize and allow me to reply, I sat quietly. She asked me to answer and I said, “there was no question”. The judge had the stenographer read back what she’d said and he agreed there was no question. Things went downhill from there. She asked to treat me as hostile, the judge said ok, but then she couldn’t think of a way to force me to say what she wanted. It was a clusterfuck. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/36 "2018-01-08T13:44:47Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Really? I doubt that. How do you refer to multiple pieces of furniture? “Them” is the proper plural of “it” in the accusative case. Third person neutral pronouns in English don’t have case declensions. I could imagine “them” in a context where individual articles have already been enumerated. But aside from that, I’d generally expect “it” because in my ideolect anyway, “furniture” defaults to a mass noun. (“All that furniture” as opposed to “all those furnitures.”) So for example, I can imagine, “There’s a chair, a couch, and a bed. We’re going to cut them up.” But I can’t imagine “There’s some furniture. We’re going to cut them up.” ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/37 "2018-01-08T15:34:56Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Third person neutral pronouns in English don’t have case declensions. For some reason I had this weird brain moment where I forgot we’re talking about plural pronouns. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/38 "2018-01-08T22:42:51Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > It doesn’t look confusing to me. The second “No” is an abbreviated repetition of “No, I did not.” I agree. A real colloquy from one of my cases in voir dire: Q. You wouldn’t believe a child’s testimony over an adult’s, would you? A. No. What did the juror mean? That she would indeed believe a child’s testimony over an adult’s? That she would believe an adult’s testimony over a child’s? She would be fair? None of the above? ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_Peebles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Jim\_Peebles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_Peebles)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/39 "2018-01-09T05:45:00Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I agree. A real colloquy from one of my cases in voir dire: > > Q. You wouldn’t believe a child’s testimony over an adult’s, would you? > A. No. > > What did the juror mean? That she would indeed believe a child’s testimony over an adult’s? That she would believe an adult’s testimony over a child’s? She would be fair? None of the above? Well you ended with a “would you?”, so the answer is unambigous. What about without the “would you”? I say quite ambiguous. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/40 "2018-01-09T14:28:40Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I wonder if there is any historical incident of a defendant being convicted solely on the basis of one poorly-chosen word. I do recall reading a fiction book in which a defendant was guilty because he said he went “back” to the crime scene as opposed to just merely “going” to the crime scene. Encyclopedia Brown. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2018, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919/41 "2018-01-09T18:56:53Z")
> [@Jim\_Peebles](#): > > Well you ended with a “would you?”, so the answer is unambigous. What about without the “would you”? I say quite ambiguous. Like **Shodan** , I say that it is not at all ambiguous. Yes, you may linguistically parse it so that it is somewhat contradictory, but in my example, the “no” clearly means: “No, I would not automatically believe a child over an adult. I would fairly weigh each piece of testimony and make a determination based on something other than the age of the witness.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-didnt-in-the-courtroom/805919.md?page=3)