Friday, August 18, 2017

Concessive Expression -2


Another article on the internet

This article is more comprehensive than the previous<English Grammar: Expressing concession and contrastand includes conditional concession, which is more complicated and more interesting than the simple concessive expressions.
 
From ThoughtCo

What is a Concessive in English Grammar?

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-concessive-grammar-1689782

Updated May 08, 2017
In English grammar, a concessive is a subordinating word or phrase that signals a contrast, qualification, or concession in relation to the idea expressed in the main clause. Also called a concessive connective.
A word group introduced by a concessive is called a concessive phrase, a concessive clause, or (more generally) a concessive construction. "Concessive clauses indicate that the situation in the matrix clause is contrary to expectation in the light of what is said in the concessive clause" (A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, 1985).

(My Note: matrix clause: a matrix clause is a clause that contains a subordinate clause. )

See Examples and Observations below.

Examples and Observations

  • "Although she was broke, she took a suite at the Waldorf, and began strewing bad checks like confetti."
    (John Bainbridge, "S. Hurok." Life, August 28, 1944)
  • "No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves."
    (Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic's Notebook. Castle Books, 1981)
  • "Your government does not exist, and should not exist, in order to keep you or anybody else--no matter what color, no matter what race, no matter what religion--from getting your damn fool feelings hurt."
    (Kurt Vonnegut, "Why You Can’t Stop Me From Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson." If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? Advice to the Young, ed. by Dan Wakefield. Seven Stories Press, 2014)
  • "Octavian, though only 19, demanded the consulship (both consuls had been killed in battle)."
    (D.H. Berry, Introduction to Political Speeches by Cicero. Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • "James sighed and mentioned how a warm personality, especially of the American sort, had a way of cooling one's appreciation of ancient beauty, irrespective of how grand the palazzo of which this personality was in possession, indeed irrespective of how fine or fast-moving her gondola."
    (Colm Toibin, The Empty Family. Scribner, 2011)
  • gift of citizenship carries great responsibility . . . the time has come when delay can no longer be tolerated . . . therefore let there no longer be doubt, either at home or abroad . . . whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice, whatever the hardship, whatever the struggle . . . we will rebuild . . ..'
    (Richard Doyle, Executive Action. Random House, 1998)
  • "Regardless of what the mayor did, regardless of what civil rights leaders did, regardless of what planners of the demonstration did, the riot was going to happen. The authorities had been indifferent to the community's demand for justice; now the community was going to be indifferent to the authorities' demand for order."
    (Tom Hayden, New York Review of Books, August 24, 1967)
  • "Patagonia, poor as she is in some respects, can however boast of a greater stock of small rodents than perhaps any other country in the world."
    (Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839)
( My Note: Irrespective, regardless are simple concessive expressions but not introduced in <English Grammar: Expressing concession and contrast>. The words irrespective, regardless show concessive meaning clearly unlike nevertheless, nonetheless, notwithstanding.
"Poor as she is" is just changing the word order like "She is poor." and "Is she poor ?" )

The Functions and Positions of Concessives

  • "English has a number of constructions that are described as 'concessives'--they grant the truth of a proposition, the existence of an object, or the value of a variable, as background to performing some other speech act, such as an assertion or request. Some examples are given in (34):
    (34a) Even if it's raining, you need to go outside.
    (34b) (Even) though you're not tired, sit down.
    (34c) Obama claims 'success' in isolating Iran, although China and others still resist sanctions.(34d) Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations that braked industrial output.
    The concessives in (34a-c) concede the truth of some proposition, and the one in (34d) concedes the existence of something. Another common concessive is no matter, which concedes an arbitrary value to some variable, as exemplified in (35):
    (35a) No matter what the weather is like, you need to go outside.
    (35b) No matter how tired you are, sit down.
    (35c) Obama claims 'success' in isolating Iran, no matter what China and others do.(35d) Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010, no matter how much the economy in various nations has slowed down.
    "A curious property of no matter is that it can lack a copula, but nevertheless express predication . . .. Some typical examples are given in (36). The no matter phrase in each case is of the form no matter wh-XP NP, where XP is typically an adjective denoting a scale, and NP is definite, and a reasonable paraphrase of the missing copula is 'may be.'
    (36a) You need to go outside, no matter what the weather (may be).
    (36b) No matter how tired your feet (may be), sit down.
    (36c) Obama claims 'success' in isolating Iran, no matter how negative the positions of other nations (may be).(36d) Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010, no matter how slow the economy in various nations (may be).
    No matter what can be paraphrased by irrespective of NP. And no matter itself can be paraphrased by irrespective of, but then may be is required."
    (Peter W. Culicover, Grammar & Complexity: Language at the Intersection of Competence and Performance. Oxford University Press, 2013)

    - "In a nutshell then, speech-act concessives allow the speaker to signal that he or she 'breaches pragmatic protocol,' and to soften that breach with a token of acknowledgment. Speech act concessives thus are by definition 'mixed messages.' . . .
(My note: "to breach pragmatic protocol" can be regarded as not to follow or being against common knowledge, common or standard reasoning, common or reasonable expectation. "no matter" means "it dose not matter" literally is the same as "regardless", "irrespective". More strongly "no matter" denies the most extreme against condition (either real or conditional). The most extreme is the superior case but this can be attained by negating something indefinite (an arbitrary value) or showing unlimitedness - nonetheless, nevertheless - not nonetheleast, nevertheleast. Nonetheless, nevertheless are tricky. These two are French type "double negation" - ne rien. Nonetheless, nevertheless are actually means the least expectation, which is shown as the conclusion.

From  <English Grammar: Expressing concession and contrast

She is pretty. She is not popular with men. 
She is pretty. Nevertheless she is not popular with men.

she is not popular with men.> is the least expected conclusion by using a common sense.

The weather is bad. Nevertheless Carl wants to climb up the hill. (from Concessive Relations below)

<Carl wants to climb up the hill>is a highly likely unexpected conclusion.)

Notwithstanding is similar. To withstand means to be against (an opposite force). Notwithstanding is French type "double negation" too. So Notwithstanding means against - against the most probable conclusion.

She is pretty. She is not popular with men.
She is pretty. Notwithstanding she is not popular with men. 
  
 Against the most probable conclusion - she is popular with men.> )

One more reasoning. If you do not agree with or simply you do not like the French type double negation we can consider the following reason. 

Withstanding an opposite force (the fact that she is pretty) +
Not being affected by an opposite force (the fact that she is pretty) 

PsychologicallyNot being affectedis very strong in the speaker's mind while Withstanding still in his or her mind. To express this condition in his or her mind it is not very strange to express Not + Withstanding together.  My note ends here.)
  • Concessives are strongly biased toward sentence-medial realization. The examples below give illustrations of typical and atypical concessive parentheticals with if.
    (35a) The message turned out to be, if not altogether graspable, at least mildly approachable. [typical](35b) If not Shakespearean, the conversation was at least spirited, thanks to Bleeck's ban on radios and jukeboxes. [atypical]"
    (Martin Hilpert, Constructional Change in English: Developments in Allomorphy, Word Formation, and Syntax. Cambridge University Press, 2013) 
(My Note: "at least" suggests "the less" or "nevertheless", "nonetheless".)

Concessive Relations

  • "A concessive relation expresses a relation of unexpectedness between two propositions. In English, concessive relations between two clauses, or between a clause and an adverbial, can be marked by a whole range of linguistic means. They include conjunctions such as although, while, and whereas, conjunctional adverbs such as nevertheless and still, and prepositions such as despite or in spite of. As the constructed examples (9) to (11) show, these three choices are largely synonymous and the selection of a particular type of connective depends on the syntactic environment:
    (9) Carl wants to climb up the hill although the weather is bad.
    (10) The weather is bad. Nevertheless Carl wants to climb up the hill.
    (11) Carl wants to climb up the hill in spite of ​the bad weather.
    In general, concessive constructions are semantically rather complex. This statement is supported by the observation 'that [concessives] develop relatively late in the history of a language and are also acquired much later than other types of adverbial clauses' (König 1994:679)."
    (Sebastian Hoffmann, Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions: A Corpus-Based Study. Routledge, 2005)

(My note: while, and whereas do not have any concessive meaning. They show just contrast. No example quoted here. The word still is a very important and commonly used word in English and shows concession in the conclusion - to remain unchanged regardless of the related influences.

One more concessive expression

Though he was warned not to come late yesterday, he come late today.
He was warned not to come late yesterday. Nevertheless he come late today.
He was warned not to come late yesterday. Still he come late today.


The common expectation of the above case is that he would not come late today, which is not stated.)



sptt

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Concessive Expression


I have recently written about the expressions using concession about Japanese, English, Italian and Chinese but not so systematic. I have found some new ideas about the concessive expression in these languages and in terms of rhetoric especially in Chinese. I summarize here in English what I have written mostly in Japanese.

People use concessive expressions, quite often and more often than you may think and mostly unconsciously. Why ? This is because even daily lives of our common people, not to mention carefully organized speeches of politicians, using a concessive expression is one powerful means of persuading other people to agree what you say or even they will take an action in favour of you. This is called as rhetoric. What is rhetoric ? The following is one definition of rhetoric available on the internet.

"
rhetoric - noun

the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.


language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, but which is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.




The important part for us (studying grammar) is the first sentence, especially 'compositional techniques'. In this case 'composition' means the use of the words and sentence structures. Next let's see what concession means in terms of grammar.


From Cambridge Dictionary

"
a clause, often beginning with "though" of "although", hat expresses an idea that suggests the opposite of the main art of the sentence:
The sentence "Although he's quite, he is not shy" begins with a concessive clause.
"

This is a explanation of Concessive Expression commonly found on the internet. I cannot find why "oncessive" ? One more

From  <English Grammar>

https://www.englishgrammar.org/expressing-concession-contrast/



 
"
Expressing concession and contrast




The same sentence showing concession or contrast can be expressed in several different ways.
Study the examples given below.
  • She is pretty. She is not popular with men.
The two sentences given above express contrasting ideas. We can connect them in several different ways.

Using though and although

Both though and although have the same meaning. They can both be used to connect these two clauses.
  • Although she is pretty, she is not popular with men.
  • Though she is pretty, she is not popular with men.
As and though

As and though can be used in a special structure after an adjective or adverb. In this case, they can both mean ‘although’, and suggest an emphatic contrast.
  • Pretty though she is, she is not popular with men.
  • Pretty as she is, she is not popular with men.
Using all the same and at the same time

These are discourse markers used to suggest that the second statement contrasts with the first. Note that a discourse marker does not connect two clauses. They merely show how the ideas are related. In writing, we separate the two clauses with a semicolon. A full stop is also possible.
  • She is pretty; all the same, she is not popular with men.
  • She is pretty; at the same time, she is not popular with men.
Using nonetheless, however and nevertheless

These are also discourse markers and cannot connect two clauses.
  • She is pretty; nonetheless, she is not popular with men.
  • She is pretty; however, she is not popular with men.
Using in spite of and despite

In spite of and despite are prepositions.
  • She is not popular with men in spite of being pretty.
  • She is not popular with men despite being pretty.
Note that after in spite of and despite we use a noun or an –ing form.

-----------

The above explanation covers almost all conceivable words to convey concession or roughly contrast but is rather simple and superficial in terms of grammar.

What is 'concession' in terms of grammar. In terms of grammar 'concession' is regarded as a 'concession' or (concessive) clause or phrase which has a concessive meaning. Then what is 'a concessive meaning' ?


She is pretty. She is not popular with men.

This shows a contrast (to most people) but has no concessive word so seems no concessive meaning. However concessive meaning can be thought as hidden.

Although she is pretty, she is not popular with men.

' Although she is pretty' is regarded as a concessive clause. The speaker admits or pretends to admit that "she is pretty." and a natural supposition that 'she be popular with men' without saying so.  We can add this supposition. This can be said that the speaker concedes a supposition that 'she be popular with men.' 

She is pretty. She is supposed to be popular with men. (But) she is not popular with men.

'But' is needed to show the contrast or the 'expectation' of 'she being supposed to be popular with men', which is contrary to the conclusion 'she is not popular with men.'

The point is 'expectation'. 'But' mainly shows contrast while 'although (though)' shows or indicates or implies an 'expectation' as well as contrast. Contrast is a real thing but expectation is not a real thing where a grammatical consideration is required like subjunctive mood. But this may be due to the sentence structure.

Although she is pretty

'Although (though) comes before 'she is pretty'. See next.

Pretty though (as) she is, she is not popular with men.

This time 'Pretty" comes first, even before 'although (as)". This is grammatically unusual. This reminds me

Should you xxxx   ?   =  If yoy xxxx

It is difficult to explain why

Pretty though (as) she is  =  Despite she is pretty

Next

She is pretty; all the same, she is not popular with men.

What does 'all the same' mean' ?

Literally 'all the same' may mean 'all the things (conditions) remain the same (unchanged)'.

But it does not make any sense of concession. The Cambridge dictionary (on the internet) says 

"
all the same: despite what has just been said
"

It explains the meaning of  'all the same' very well and it does mean 'concessive' but not word by word. It seems rather

Despite what has just been said 'all the things (conditions) remain the same (unchanged)'. 

'All the same' or all the things (conditions) remain the same (unchanged)' is a result of
despite what has just been said. Or 'All the same' does not show anything about the process of reaching the conclusion: all the same and it means 'despite what has just been said'.

Next

She is pretty; nonetheless (nevertheless), she is not popular with men.

These two are used in the conclusion part, not the concessive part.'nonetheless' and 'nevertheless' are similar as they are supposed to be originally

none the less
never the less

What do these two mean ? I considered for several days. The possibilities are as follows:

'None' and 'never' are negation. The problem is 'the less'. If this is 'the least' it means the minimum. But 'the less' is used. 'The less' may mean the lesser degree of expectation.

She is pretty.

The lesser degree of expectation of this is

She is highly unlikely popular with men.

The negation of this is

She is highly likely popular with men.

So this (the lesser degree expectation) is wrong.

If on the contrary 'the less' may mean the lesser degree of un-expectation.

the less  -  lesser degree of un-expectation - she is highly unlikely un-popular with men.

This means 'he is popular with men.' The negation of this or the conclusion is 'she is not popular with men.'

Rhetorically seems right but a roundabout explanation and also few people think that 'the less' means the lesser degree of un-expectation.

We can use 'double negation' which is commonly used in French and Italian like 'non rien' and 'non niente'. 'Double negation' is an emphasis of single negation. When we apply this to our case

the less ->the lesser degree of expectation -> un-expectedly 

the none the less ('none' simply emphasizes un-expectedly)  ->

She is pretty; very un-expectedly, she is not popular with men.

Nevertheless is the same as nonetheless.

She is pretty; notwithstanding, she is not popular with men.

We can use this to 'notwithstanding' too.

'To withstand' means 'to bear' or 'to keep or to sustain oneself against something without broken or damaged'.

She is pretty; without broken or damaged by anything (against my opinion), she is not popular with men. Not of notwithstanding is not a negation but an emphasis of whithstanding (= without broken or damaged by anything (against my opinion)).

Plus the condition of 'without broken or damaged by anything' is similar to 'all the same' = 'all the things (conditions) remain the same (unchanged)'. This is a part of the concept of concessive expression.

Next and finally in the quote from <English Grammar>

She is not popular with men in spite of (despite) being pretty.

The point is the word 'spite'. 'Spite' seems to have nothing with concessive expression or even with grammar. 'Spite' originally and still actually means 'ill will', 'malice', 'wicked mind', etc. though not so often heard and used. 'Spiteful' is slightly more heard and used.

Why does 'spite' mean 'concession' ?

A person which has 'ill will' or a spiteful person is by all means against someone else's will. So 'spite' can be regarded as 'against'.

She is not popular with men against being pretty.

 can make sense.

The above <English Grammar> does not show anything else.

if xxxx >is not a conessive expression but a conditional expression. But even if xxxx > can be regarded as a (conditional) conessive expression. Besides even if xxxx <whatever (whoever, whenever, wherever, etc) xxxx> and <no matter what (who, when, where, how xxxx> can also be regarded as conessive expressions.


sptt

 




Tuesday, August 8, 2017

外国人には難しい<ので>、<のに>


このポストは”外国人には難しい助詞の<の>” の続編。<の>が外国人には難しい助詞とするとこれまたよく使う<の>がつく<ので>、<のに>も外国人には難しいことになる。


1.ので

<ので>は原因や理由を述べるときに、日本人であれば無意識で使う。英語の because ほどの強い<原因や理由>の拘束力が常にあるというわけではなく、後から言う結論のつけたし説明程度のこともある。<から>の方が<原因や理由>の拘束力が強いようだ。

花子が行くので(から)、太郎も行く。
この数学問題は難しいので、 花子には解けない。(この数学問題は難しいから、 花子には解けないだろう。) <ので>はどちらかと言うと一般的な説明口調。一方<から>は理由の意が強まるようだ。
これから行くので(から)、待っていてくれ。
疲(つか)れたので(から)、すこし休ませてもらう。
いま忙しいので(から)、後にしてくれ。

この<ので>と<から>は過去のこと述べる場合には様相が違ってくる。

花子が行ったので、太郎も行った。
 この数学問題は難しかったので、 花子には解けなかった。

花子が行ったから、太郎も行った。
この数学問題は難しかったから、 花子には解けなかった

<ので>の方が自然だ。<ので>には<原因や理由>を示す以外に断定、確定の意味があるが、<から>にはない。<ので>の奥が深いところだ。

おもしろい言葉に漢語由来の<以上>がある。

花子が行く以上、太郎も行く。

これは

花子が行くから、太郎も行く。

以上に<原因や理由>の拘束力が強いようだ。さらには少し変だが

花子が行く以上、少なくとも太郎も行く。

とも言える。<以上>は大和言葉では<少なくとも>だ。

以上=minimum
少なくとも = at least、 minimum

君、やれる以上は、少なくともやるべきだ。

はおかしくない。


2.のに

<のに>は譲歩条件を述べるときに使う。英語の in spite of (despite)、even though (にもかかわらず)ほどの強い<譲歩条件>の拘束力はない。これまた日本人であれば無意識で使い分けるが、下記の例文からは、どうも<期待、予想、忠告に反して>の意が多く、接続法がらみで文法的にはおもしろい分析対象だ。したがって過去のことを述べるのが多いか?

花子が行くのに、太郎は行かない。
この数学問題は難しいのに、 花子は解いてしまった。
幾度も言ったのに、聞かないから(ので)、こういう結果なるのだ。 (この場合<ので>でははやや弱い)
この製品、価格は(が)高いのに、すぐこわれる。
この製品、価格は(が)高かったのに、すぐこわれてしまった。

話がずれるが、上記二例の<は>と<が>の違いも外国人には難しい。

<は>は説明口調。価格(が高い)の強調。
<が>は報告口調。

(喫煙が体に悪いのは)わかっているのに、やめられない。

以上いずれも<のに>は<にもかかわず>で言い換えられるのはわずか二つの助詞だが<のに>の威力を示す。


sptt