Rounding out Tufguy's "How Long Do You Weigh?" Thread

[Phaedrus]

Greetings,

I just composed a lengthy, well-documented post that promptly vanished into thin air when I clicked "Submit New Thread," because my password had expired today and I was required to re-enter the new one I created. In the process, my post was lost, and I had neglected to save the text of the post before trying to post it. Why am I mentioning all this? It's because I don't have the time or energy to try to repeat what I said in it or rehash the conversation I created as context.

Therefore, I shall simply stick to the essence of the now-nonexistent post, and elaborate in replies if elaboration is desired. The post was responding to the objections of unnaturalness and of stretching language to (or beyond) the breaking point, which objections came in response to my defense of the possible, fully grammatical meaning of How long do you weigh? as asking for the length of time the interlocutor regularly spends weighing certain contextually understood things.

I grant that How much do you weigh? is infinitely easier to process than How long do you weigh?, which has a totally different meaning. What makes the latter question so much harder to process, and therefore so susceptible to the charge of unnaturalness, is that we are not accustomed to experiencing contexts in which that sentence would have a home. In such a context, the sentence would be perfectly natural, and the English language would not be stretched in the slightest.

Regarding the additional charge of being unhelpful to learners, the one and only "like" that Tufguy has awarded in that thread is to my post #8.

That will be all.

Phaedrus

P.S. A family member of mine to whom I mentioned this thread, which I have found amusing as hell (I want never to forget Tufguy's example), observed something worth mentioning, in light of the fact that the example was something Tufguy may have heard rather than read. It's possible that the word he heard was really "wait"! How long do you wait? is of course every bit as obviously natural, in a contextual vacuum, as How much do you weigh? Of course, when we find such sentences obviously natural in a contextual vacuum, what we have really done is filled the vacuum with easily imaginable contexts that we are used to experiencing.

 

[5jj]

How long do you wait? is of course every bit as obviously natural, in a contextual vacuum, as How much do you weigh? Of course, when we find such sentences obviously natural in a contextual vacuum, what we have really done is filled the vacuum with easily imaginable contexts that we are used to experiencing.

I don't agree.

How much do you weigh? is completely meaningful in a contextual vacuum. I could walk up to a complete stranger and ask that question; they would know exactly what I meant. They might well be shocked or angered by the question, but that's beside the point.

How long do you wait? is not meaningful in a contextual vacuum. We need to think of a context in which that five-word question could be uttered.

How long do you weigh? requires such a contrived context for it to be possible that it seems to me pointless to waste learners' time contriving that context.

It is, of course, possible to make sense of many odd word-groupings. Many people have come up with ideas that give meaning to Chomsky's Colorless green ideas sleep furiously (I had my own try once), but such things are intellectual exercises, not serious aids for learners.

 

[jutfrank]

I hope that now the conversation has been moved to the discussions forum that the moderators won't be inclined to close the thread, even if dialogue gets frosty again, because I think there is something interesting to say about all this.

I'd like both of you to know how much I appreciate and enjoy discussing language with you, and I hope we can continue to do this in good spirits.

 

[GoesStation]

Make sure you consider this variant:

How high do you weigh?

I've come up with a context for it which is 100% as likely as that proposed for the subject sentence.

 

[Phaedrus]

Make sure you consider this variant:

How high do you weigh?

I've come up with a context for it which is 100% as likely as that proposed for the subject sentence.

That's hilarious, GoesStation. I'd enjoy hearing the context. If I am divining it aright, I'd probably prefer to add up.

How high up do you weigh?
= How high up are you when you do your weighing?

I suppose it is possible for the sentence to do without up, though I find myself having to strain more than I do with How long do you weigh?

 

[GoesStation]

That's hilarious, GoesStation. I'd enjoy hearing the context. If I am divining it aright, I'd probably prefer to add up.

That works but it's miles from what I had in mind.

 

[Phaedrus]

That works but it's miles from what I had in mind.

It occurred to me while I was running that your "How high" could refer to altered states of consciousness, i.e. to "being high" to a certain degree (on something), such that the question may involve the idea of "weighing under the influence" of some drug. I'd be willing to bet that's why you're beating around the bush!

Incidentally, while we're "experimenting," no pun intended, it has also occurred to me that How much do you weigh? is itself technically ambiguous. It is possible for the sentence to mean How often do you weigh?, in which case weigh would be interpreted as the dynamic weigh rather than the stative weigh.

A worker at a slaughterhouse complaining to a coworker might say:
"Every day I have to weigh cattle for hours. I'm sick of it. Nobody else here has to weigh as much as I do. How much do you weigh?"

 

[emsr2d2]

My main problem with "How long do you weigh?" is that it needs something after "weigh".

Helen: What do you do for a living?
John: I weigh apples.
Helen: Wow! How long do you weigh them for?
John: About ten hours a day.

 

[Rover_KE]

I just composed a lengthy, well-documented post that promptly vanished into thin air when I clicked "Submit New Thread," because my password had expired today and I was required to re-enter the new one I created. In the process, my post was lost, and I had neglected to save the text of the post before trying to post it.

When you are typing, you will see 'Auto-Saved' briefly flash up every 60 seconds in the bottom right-hand corner.

When you subsequently return to the thread and hit Reply, if you click Go Advanced and scroll down, you'll see Restore Auto-Saved Content in the bottom left-hand corner.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Yes, my guess, too, was that Tufguy simply heard wrong.

Your reasoning regarding grammar and meaning are right on, but I do agree with others that if he had just given us the link it would have cleared everything up without a fuss.

 

[Tdol]

I suppose you could come up with a context for a spring scale, but it's still a bit of a stretch.

I'll get my coat.

 

[Phaedrus]

I don't agree.

How much do you weigh? is completely meaningful in a contextual vacuum. I could walk up to a complete stranger and ask that question; they would know exactly what I meant. They might well be shocked or angered by the question, but that's beside the point.

What if the complete stranger to whom you posed the question How much do you weigh? were an employee in a factory where he and other employees weigh things regularly as part of their job, and you asked him the question at his workplace? Would this complete stranger know whether you meant to ask for his weight (stative) or to ask how often he weighs (dynamic) in the factory? Both interpretations would be perfectly natural for him in that setting.

How long do you wait? is not meaningful in a contextual vacuum. We need to think of a context in which that five-word question could be uttered.

Yes, we need to imagine a context to appreciate its naturalness. How long do you wait? lacks the formulaic quality of How much do you weigh?, How tall are you?, What is your name?, Where are you from?, which could all be introduced to learners in their first week of studying English. However, using natural English does not require that we stick to formulaic sentences that we native speakers have heard perhaps hundreds of thousands of times in live interaction.

A: I take the bus to school every day and try to get to the bus stop by seven in the morning.
B: How long do you wait?
A: If I succeed in getting there by seven, I usually only wait ten minutes. The bus is scheduled to stop there at 7:10 a.m.

Even if you might tweak a word or two of this imaginary conversation to get it exactly to your liking, I think we can agree that the question How long do you wait? can successfully be used as perfectly natural English in such a context. Thus, the fact that, in a contextual vacuum, we have to strain a little to see the possible naturalness of the sentence does not deprive it of its possible naturalness. Consider that we use sentences like He does all the time, and that it is one-hundred-percent natural, whereas, taken out of context, the sentence could hardly be less natural. It requires an antecedent, e.g., a question like Does he fish?

Grammaticality being presupposed, naturalness is a function of use in context. That is the thesis I wish to maintain.

How long do you weigh? requires such a contrived context for it to be possible that it seems to me pointless to waste learners' time contriving that context.

In general, I agree with you there. I don't really know what level Tufguy is at, especially since I don't look at all his threads, so I can't speak to whether he was ready to bend his mind for a possible meaning that hardly anyone would guess was there.

In online grammar life, we encounter all types. One "learner" with whom I have had the good fortune to correspond (he is also a member here, under two different names) speaks and writes very fluent English, has a Ph.D. in philosophy, has been studying English for nearly fifty years, and has a talent for discovering ambiguity where hardly any native speakers would naturally discover it. But he is a rare case (perhaps one of a kind).

It was the assertion that the sentence How long do you weigh? was meaningless that inspired me to bend my mind over it for a moment or two. If the question had been "Is this correct?" and answer had been "The speaker should have said How much do you weigh?," I'm sure I never would have made a post in the thread.

By the way, thank you for sharing your poem inspired by Chomsky's "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." I enjoyed it very much.

 

[5jj]

One "learner" with whom I have had the good fortune to correspond (he is also a member here, under two different names) speaks and writes very fluent English, has a Ph.D. in philosophy, has been studying English for nearly fifty years, and has a talent for discovering ambiguity where hardly any native speakers would naturally discover it. .

Off-topic.

If you are thinking of the same member I am thinking of, 'he' is not a member with two different names. He told me once that he and his wife are individual members. They just happen to submit their questions from the same computer. I would not agree that he/they have a talent for discovering ambiguity where hardly any native speakers would naturally discover it. In many of the the examples they find/produce, there is only potential ambiguity. Most of them are not at all ambiguous to a native speaker.

By the way, thank you for sharing your poem inspired by Chomsky's "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." I enjoyed it very much.

Thank you.

 

[Phaedrus]

Off-topic.

If you are thinking of the same member I am thinking of, 'he' is not a member with two different names. He told me once that he and his wife are individual members. They just happen to submit their questions from the same computer. I would not agree that he/they have a talent for discovering ambiguity where hardly any native speakers would naturally discover it. In many of the the examples they find/produce, there is only potential ambiguity. Most of them are not at all ambiguous to a native speaker.

Jutfrank's distinction between "speaker meaning" and "sentence meaning" (in the precursor to this thread) plays an important role here. When you speak of examples in which "there is only potential ambiguity," you are implicitly acknowledging ambiguity at the level of sentence meaning. That is the level at which we can ask "What meaning or meanings can this sentence grammatically express?" If there is a plurality of possible meanings, then the sentence is at least theoretically ambiguous.

The possibility of meanings which diverge from the ones we naturally assume are in play is precisely what this member (or this "couple," like Piscean and 5jj) is interested in. Generally speaking, he is already aware that the possible "other meaning(s)" he is asking about can be more naturally phrased in different ways, and, of course, he is never surprised when the answers he gets suggest alternate phrasing. Believe me, I often take that approach to answering his (and her?) questions, too!

Nevertheless, his main interest is in possible sentence meanings. The reason I perceive my bringing up this member NOT to be off-topic is that he represents, in perhaps an exaggerated form, a highly advanced learner of English, right at the insurmountable cusp between nonnative and native, whose interest is (frequently) in possible sentence meanings. The alternate possible meanings genuinely bother him. His questions are truly "felt questions," I have come to learn.

When you say that "[m]ost of [the examples they find/produce] are not at all ambiguous to a native speaker," you are essentially talking about Jutfrank's "speaker meaning." Given a typical context, the speaker will mean one thing by a sentence. The alternative possible meanings, where they exist, would only be applicable in an atypical context, and in such an atypical context a speaker would often choose to express the idea differently anyway.

Still, the other possibilities exist at the level of sentence meaning. I should start a grammatical movement.

SMM: Sentence Meaning Matters.

 

[Tdol]

What if the complete stranger to whom you posed the question How much do you weigh? were an employee in a factory where he and other employees weigh things regularly as part of their job, and you asked him the question at his workplace? Would this complete stranger know whether you meant to ask for his weight (stative) or to ask how often he weighs (dynamic) in the factory? Both interpretations would be perfectly natural for him in that setting.

They would probably have an idea- if the police were investigating a murder at the factory, they would probably not be interested in the person's body weight, This would be not true of journalists investigating obesity in factories where people weigh things. People would be unlikely to ask that question without a reason.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

How long do you wait to euthanize a thread?

 

[probus]

I'm with you Charlie. This thread has weighed plenty long enough.