Re: Yet another Lisp Myth debunked

From: Duane Rettig (duane_at_franz.com)
Date: 04/23/04 

Date: 23 Apr 2004 12:30:22 -0700

Cameron MacKinnon <cmackin+nn@clearspot.net> writes:

> Duane Rettig wrote:
> > But to practice a little one-upsmanship on your pedantry, that is not
> > actually what PG said.
> > Consider the four phrases:
>
> > "I don't expect for myself to convince ..."
>
> > "I don't expect us to convince ..."
>
> > "I don't expect this article to convince ..."
>
> > "I don't expect anyone to convince ..."
>
>
> "I don't expect not to convince ..." - You can't just add words and
> say it's a valid interpretation. English doesn't work that way.

Well, of course English doesn't work the way in which you've just
demonstrated, but it certainly does work by elision; a good portion
of communication skills is based on what is _not_ said.

The antecedent of the prepositional phrase "to convince..." is elided.
It is not the preposition at the beginning of the sentence, which is
in fact the subject for the transitive verb "expect". Note that expect
is missing its object, as well, and that object ends up serving as the
subject of the prepositional verb-phrase "to convince".

The reader/hearer of such elision is the one who supplies the elided
object/antecedent, which can be any word whose subjective form can serve
as the subject of the phrase "<subject> <tense> convince(s) anyone ...
to learn Lisp", and which can thus be any one of "myself (I)", "us (we)",
"this article", or "anyone" (or other objects, as well), but
which _cannot_ be "not", which is never a noun (unless enclosed
in double-quotes).

> Phrases one and three are, effectively, the same.

I disagree.

> To argue otherwise
> is to suggest that PG had better arguments than those he presented in
> his article, but he was saving them for some other time.

So argued. PG has written many articles at various times, and I'm sure
if you looked closely they would not all be completely consistent,
but even if they were, and he had said all that he had had to say,
then why would he write the other articles? If he writes on top of the
pinnacle of his own writing, then further writing would be redundant.

> In rhetoric, you have to assume that your opponent is marshalling
> his best arguments.

If you do that, you'll lose some of your arguments. There are a
number of reasons why a rhetorical opponent doesn't always marshal
his best arguments. 

-- 
Duane Rettig    duane@franz.com    Franz Inc.  http://www.franz.com/
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