Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 March 16

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March 16

Help understanding apparently ungrammatical passage

The article Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has the following in its fourth paragraph:

As to a range of jurisdictions including England and Wales to which a further appeal can be sought (permission of either court is needed), is the senior figure of President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, in a court that determines cases from the relevant Court of Appeal using the relevant jurisdiction's laws and contributes to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and hears fewer cases than the Court of Appeal.

This sentence just leaves my head whirling, with no actual subject that I can find. Is it just me or is the sentence badly written? NS-Merni (talk) 17:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

It isn't you. It's badly written. I've not really any idea what it's trying to say. Bazza (talk) 17:44, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

It was added in this edit in July 2020, by User:Adam37. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:26, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, that makes it clearer. (Adam37 says "My areas of expertise include grammar, syntax, modern hermeneutics", which is just as well.) I think the sentence goes with the one before, and is using "as to" to mean "A is to B as C is to D". He's saying that the President of the Supreme Court of the UK is the equivalent of the Lord Chief Justice, in a certain context, in the same way that the Lord President of the Court of Session is the equivalent in Scotland and Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland is the equivalent in Northern Ireland. The context is question is the jurisdiction directly overarching the [courts of] England and Wales, but he forgot to write those two words "courts of". Subsequent edits have made the context muddier and difficult to parse.  Card Zero  (talk) 19:16, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Also, if I understand correctly – correct me if I'm wrong – there should be a comma following "As": "As, to courts of a range of jurisdictions ..., is the senior figure ...". (My areas of expertise include punctuation.) The juxtaposition "As to" leads one down the garden path.  --Lambiam 21:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense: it's a sentence of the form as A is to B, but rearranged, producing as, to B, is A. (Or is it a sentence fragment?)  Card Zero  (talk) 21:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

If you (or others) understood what it's trying to say, could you edit it to make more sense? (To me, the pre-edited version in the diff linked looks very clear, but I assume there was some reason to change it to what feels like a more muddled version...) NS-Merni (talk) 05:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I (for one) understand the matter insufficiently to confidently rewrite this. In "either court", which are the two courts? The President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is a function assumed by a person; the function is not a court, and the Wikipedia article does not make clear what this function entails. And how to interpret "a court that determines cases from the relevant Court of Appeal". Does "the relevant Court of Appeal" not determine its own cases, but delegates them to some other court? Also, why not specify the full range of relevant jurisdictions, instead of "including England and Wales"?  --Lambiam 11:55, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Attempting to describe the UK's court system in articles on their presiding judgeships instead of articles on the courts themselves is perhaps not the best approach.  --Lambiam 12:04, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Fixed. Everyone sees the honours, order of precedence, similar of LCJ but in point of jurisprudence and as a master or co-convener and deadlock-breaker of three separate systems of law in the modern judiciary the role is lower than Pres. Sup. Ct. If some few dissenters I predict do not think that's very notable then that fails to recognise the hierarchy of courts right across the UK.- Adam37 Talk 17:58, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

A possible shower or two

I keep hearing TV weather presenters tell us things like "Sydney will have a possible shower or two today". In this case, "possible" is not describing the kind of shower Sydney will have, but it goes to the very existence of the precipitation, i.e. "Sydney will possibly have a shower or two today".

What's the term for this transference of the notion of possibility from an adverb with the verb "will have" to an adjective with the noun "shower"? Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:36, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

This is not directly responsive, but your question reminds me a lot of an issue in quantified modal logic, namely whether from $\Diamond \exists xP(x)$ you're allowed to conclude $\exists x\Diamond P(x)$ — that is, if it's possible that there's an x that has property P, does it follow that there is an x that possibly has property P? This inference is an axiom in some systems, and I vaguely got the idea at some point that it was one of the key points of contention in the discussion over Gödel's proof of the existence of God. --Trovatore (talk) 23:06, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

JackofOz -- the most relevant Wikipedia article is probably Scope (formal semantics), but I'm not sure how helpful you'll find it... AnonMoos (talk) 02:17, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Jack, as in these old threads, I think that what we have here is an instance of hypallage—probably unconscious in this case. Deor (talk) 02:54, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The first meaning Wiktionary gives for possible is "able but not certain to happen; neither inevitable nor impossible". This shower (or two) in the morning may happen, but this is not certain; it is neither inevitable nor impossible. So then it is possible. In the weather report sentence, "a possible shower or two" only becomes strange by being made the object of "will have", which exudes definitiveness. A sentence like "Sydney will have a dry day today, except for a possible shower or two" is unproblematic.  --Lambiam 11:05, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

A shower or two may be possible, but I query whether such showers are "possible showers". I take your point that "a possible shower or two" only becomes strange by being made the object of "will have", but it would be equally strange if it were the object of "may have", which is not definite. And in that case, there would be no need for the word "possible" at all. "Sydney may have a shower or two today" - perfect.

In the same vein, presenters and their writers get into a muddle with "So and so could possibly/potentially happen". The problem there being that "could", while excluding definiteness, exudes (to borrow your term) potentiality. So the word "possibly/potentially" adds no value. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:15, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

A pipeline burst, and a panel investigates its cause. Was it hydraulic shock? There is an arrestor device guarding against hydraulic shock. If the device worked, hydraulic shock can be excluded. But if the device failed, hydraulic shock is a possible cause. The device should be inspected twice a year, but the last inspection recorded in the inspection reports took place five years ago. So the device could have failed, and so hydraulic shock could be a possible cause.  --Lambiam 10:19, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

"A possible shower or two" means "a chance of showers" or more precisely "a chance of a shower or two". Hence, its intended meaning does not conflict with the verbs "will have" or "could". The adverb of possible and less cogent meanings of it are irrelevant. Modocc (talk) 17:29, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

To my mind, "possible" does indeed conflict with "could", in the sense of being tautologous. "Could" implies possibility. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:55, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Could be. But if the bypass project manager would just lay down on the ground quick enough there could be a possible shower, if I heard yesterday's news correctly and they hadn't changed their forecast since then, while we're having a few beers in the pub before it all ends.--Modocc (talk) 23:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

@JackofOz:, if you were to find this suggestion a bit overwrought, I would understand — but check out the SEP entry on "trans-world identity". I think by some formulations of this, you could consider a "possible shower" to be an entity that is a shower in some possible world, but something else (maybe a sunny day?) in other possible worlds. In that case, it makes perfect sense to say there will be a possible shower today in Sidney. --Trovatore (talk) 04:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Transfer the construction to some other context. A man has lost his son in a shopping mall. He goes up to the admin office, explains his situation, and they offer to show him some live CCTV footage from various parts of the complex starting from where he last saw the son. He looks at some screens, sees a possible candidate, and says - what? Who would ever say "Hmm, that could be my possible son, but I'm not sure if he was wearing that colour shirt"? Hardly. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:38, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thus given that the man has a son, "possibly my son" is better though "could be possibly" is redundant. "That is possibly my son" is even better. "That's my son!" Best. And I see I forgot that I am back to using an adverb, which is fine of course as you stated from the outset. "It is possible he is my son." isn't "possible son". "Possible son" is what someone might say if they are speaking broken English.Also, I hear the phrase "It could be possible." quite a bit. Perpetual motion? Certainly. I'm still working on it.. -Modocc (talk) 12:25, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

wp:deny
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
"Possible son" is perfectly good English, for example when discussing the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury looked nothing like his mother's husband, until a DNA test proved he was no relation ([1] (section 9)). 2.26.47.229 (talk) 15:26, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

True, but I do agree with Jack of Oz that "could be my possible son" is not appropriate with his context on account of the ambiguity of "possible son" regarding its existential meaning. Simply "could be" doesn't mean the son doesn't exist. If the father missing his son has limited skill they might answer with "Possible son." I just wouldn't expect it to be said by most speakers. --Modocc (talk) 16:41, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

That discussion is about epistemic possibility — he either is or isn't my son; we just don't know. In the case of a future possible shower, it might be a different sort of possibility involved, where the answer as to whether it will be a shower doesn't exist yet, because of physical indeterminism. I think that would be called ontic possibility maybe? Not sure whether this affect the grammar. --Trovatore (talk) 17:01, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Ontic possibility seems fine, but has two meanings so might be too ambiguous in some situations and thanks for bringing that term to my attention for its broadest scope should be inclusive of imperfect models such that we can convey states of being that are acknowledged and material, fictional or not. For example, is heaven an ontic possibility? If heaven or something like it is with us, certainly. Scientifically, we study biology and model matter, energy, blocktime, spacetime, quantum uncertainties and cosmology, yet we may never exhaust the undiscovered ontic possibilities that might exist. With possible showers the meteorologist will limit themselves to physical possibilities but a fatalist may invoke a wait-and-see what happens approach to the same event(s). In any case, I don't believe any of that affects the construction of the grammar regarding one's forecasts. Modocc (talk) 19:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

The closest I can find in Wikipedia is subjunctive possibility, but if I've understood that correctly it seems to be about counterfactuals. This future-tense case is not a counterfactual; it's that there is not (yet) any fact of the matter to be counter to, though there will be eventually. I'm not sure whether this can be intelligibly separated from tense logic, though I would think it could with sufficient cleverness. --Trovatore (talk) 20:15, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Write sentences one way if you want to avoid worrying about how to do it the other way

Let's apply this heading to singular nouns ending in s. Here are some statements written in the "one way" that this sentence refers to when dealing with singular nouns ending in s (the bold phrases show what I'm talking about):

Please measure the height of the glass.

I need to put away everything lying on top of a desk belonging to Charles.

Are there any sentences you know where trying to write this way can cause problems?? (Please note that the subject here is giving possession to singular nouns ending in s; the above sentences are written the "one way" that the heading of this section refers to.) Georgia guy (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the first sentence is all that eligible for a possessive construction anyway ("the glass's height" somehow seems awkward). But for the second example, "I need to put everything on Charles' desk away" is the most natural way to say it. I think "Charles's" is kind of a disfavored spelling now, so I'm not sure that there's a real decision which is being avoided by the use of paraphrases. AnonMoos (talk) 02:12, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

If you are a native speaker, you can follow this rule. If you'd say /ˈtʃɑːlz.dɛsk/, write "Charles' desk" (like "in Jesus' name"). But if you'd rather say /ˈtʃɑːlzɪz.dɛsk/, write "Charles's desk" (like in "Charles's law").  --Lambiam 10:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

The first sentence is fine, as would be the alternative "Please measure the glass's height." The second sentence is weird, and I don't think any native English speaker would use it. The use of "a desk" rather than "the desk" suggests it might be more usually worded "I need to put everything on one of Charles's desks away." I'm not sure what there is to worry about in English possessives anyway: the rules are simple, without the large list of exceptions found in many English grammars.

@AnonMoos: "Disfavoured": Except for Wikipedia Bazza (talk) 09:00, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

"A desk belonging to Charles" might not be "Charles's desk". He may, for example, own two desks, one at which he works, and another at which his secretary works. They both belong to Charles, but only the first would be called "Charles's desk". DuncanHill (talk) 12:45, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Unless I've misunderstood you, I think that's what I said. Bazza (talk) 13:08, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bazza 7: Yes, I think you did, but I thought an example might help OP. DuncanHill (talk) 13:11, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: Who disfavours "Charles's"? "Charles' desk" sounds like a person. DuncanHill (talk) 13:17, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

As above, I know of zero modern style guides that recommend the "Charles'" format over the "Charles's" format. There are some that note that older sources, with fixed forms, use formats such as "Jesus'" and "Moses'" and the like, but modern style guides almost universally recommend using "'s" for singular words (including proper names) that end in "s". See MOS:POSS, to wit "For the possessive of singular nouns, including proper names and words ending in s, add 's". --Jayron32 14:46, 21 March 2022 (UTC)