On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 09:19:25 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
On Thursday, 23 January 2014 at 10:24:23 UTC, Chris wrote:
A good example are headlines. A classic is "Driver refused
license". Now, everybody will assume that it was not the
driver who refused the license (default assumption or the
_unmarked case_).
Why it's not a driver who refused a license?
More likely that it's a driver who was refused a license by the
State (because of some reason such as "you've been caught
drinking and driving 20 times so you're totally banned"). People
aren't offered licenses and accept or reject them, they must seek
them out. It doesn't make sense for someone to walk up (or be
given a ride to by a friend) to the DMV wait 30 minutes and once
they do all the work to get the license say "Wait, no, I refuse
this after all."
So, despite "Driver refused license" possibly meaning "the driver
refused to accept the license despite being able to" or "driver
was refused a license by the State (due to some circumstance)",
it's massively more likely to be the latter.
