Laurence Horn

laurence.horn at YALE.EDU

Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Philosophy

PhD in Linguistics, UCLA (1972)

Sun Mar 9 15:16:08 UTC 2008

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At 10:33 AM +0000 3/9/08, Michael Quinion wrote:

The phrase "few would argue that" appeared in the last World Wide Words newsletter and was criticised by numerous subscribers as being either an error ("argue" used when "dispute" was meant) or yet another example of the dumbing-down of English that was leading to ill-thought-out, new-fangled, ambiguous phrases like this one.

That it can be ambiguous there is no doubt, though context usually makes it clear which version is meant. From the Guardian last October: "few would argue that classical music still provides one of the most effective means of teaching musical literacy"; From the Grocer in 2005: "Few would argue that running a convenience store is an effective remedy for stress."

Though there are examples from the late 18th century, the phrase seems to have become much more common in recent decades. Can somebody advise me: was it always ambiguous, or has one of the two senses crept in recently through some process of misanalysis?

I can't answer that one, but I suspect the circumstances for ambiguity and misconstrual are endemic to the construction. Thus "It is arguable that p", and especially "It's arguable whether p", is generally taken to imply 'it's doubtful/unlikely that p', while "It is arguably the case that p" or "Arguably p", generally implying 'it's probable that p'. The intuitions reported here are my own; AHD4, for example, simply lists "arguably" under the heading for "arguable" without a separate gloss, and gives "arguable" these two rather inconsistent senses, of which I would maintain only the second can survive the conversion to the adverb "arguably":

1. Open to argument: an arguable question, still unresolved.

2. That can be argued plausibly; defensible in argument: three arguable points of law.

LH

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文章大概意思：

few would argue that…具有完全相反的歧义（如同claim对dispute）。当初，few would argue that用作few would dispute that之意时，遭到众多批评。读者认为这是错误，要么是典型的语言趋于俗气案例，这种现象导致模棱两可、新奇怪异、粗制滥造的短语频频出现。

  毫无疑问，这种结构模糊不清，读者只能通过语境判断few would argue that的意思。

劳伦斯•霍恩发现，few would argue that在18世界就已经出现，近几十年来势头强劲。

那么，这个结构到底是一直就模棱两可，还是由于错误分析不知不觉有了另一层意思？劳伦斯•霍恩发现自己也答不上来。但他认为这个结构总带有模糊不清、引人误解的语境。

由此产生了另外一个问题，arguable也具有两个相反的意思：doubtful/unlikely和probable。

那么arguably呢？劳伦斯•霍恩认为，"Arguably p"暗含 'it's probable that p'，这只是他个人的直觉。

比如，AHD4的编排就有些混乱——给arguable两个自相矛盾的含义，简单地把arguably放在同一标签下，竟然不另做注释。劳伦斯•霍恩主张：只有arguable第二个义项可以派生出arguably。

后记：

昨天在http://forum.wordreference.com论坛就此问题发了一个帖子，从回帖看：如果没有语境，老外对few would argue that…的理解也会出现偏差。回帖内容如下：

如沐春风

【问】

Few would argue that his team has experience and proven ability.

Hi guys. The sentence above comes from collins dictionary. It totally confuses me.

What can we learn from the sentence?

【答】

grassy (Senior Member, Warsaw, Polish) 

It means that not many people would argue the team has experience and ability. 

(按：等于没有作答，但好像认为argue=claim)

Uncle Jack (Senior Member, Cumbria, UK, British English)

The general opinion is that this team does not have experience and proven ability. Few people would argue against this.

SevenDays (Senior Member, Spanish)

Few has a "negative" connotation. In Few would argue that this team has experience and proven ability, it's understood that the team does not have experience and proven ability (as already stated in this thread), and "not many people" would argue otherwise. 

To signal "positive" connotation (that the team has experience and proven ability), language turns to "a few." A few would argue that this team has experience and proven ability. In this sense, "a few" means "some," with "some" having a positive meaning too. Notice that we can't use "some" with "few," because of the overall negative meaning involved.

总结：

确如劳伦斯•霍恩论所述：

1. 这一结构确实势头强劲——咱们讨论的就是《柯林斯高阶英汉双解词典》的例句；刘老师提供的大量例句，有的出自字典，有的是权威语料；曹老师提供的例句，也是收入COCA的（我不否认COCA 不如字典，但我认为有参考价值）

2. 这一结构有歧义——比如曹老师和刘老师观点截然相反；三个外国人在forum.wordreference.com的回答也偏离了本意，即使再多外国人回答也会莫衷一是。

3. 如果处理这个结构——单就一个孤立句子而言，可能会出现相反的理解，所以要结合语境做出判断。

本帖保留开放状态，老师们可以发表看法。谢谢。