Harold Fuchs wrote:
You and your teacher are absolutely correct. The purpose of language is
*correctly* to transfer the thoughts of one to another. That is
precisely why grammar is important. The phrase "The President said
Monday ..." implies that the word "Monday" is included in what the
President said. Therefore it does not *correctly* transfer the thought.
The president said, “Monday ....”.
“The president,” said Monday .... [Monday is here the name for a person.]
The president said Monday ....
The president said on Monday ....
The president said on the economy ....
The president said on the dais at the Lincoln Center ...
The president spoke Monday .... [A very unambiguous utterance.]
The president spoke on Monday .... [This could mean that the president
spoke on the subject of Monday.]
The president spoke on the economy ....
Grammar alone often does not correctly transfer the thought to the point
where a hearer *cannot* interpret the utterance very differently than
intended. Yet the utterance may be fully understood without difficulty
by 99.9999% of those who hear the utterance. “President saided Monday ....”
The same is true of "Biden will debate Palin". No he won't. He'll debate
[the issues] *with* Palin. If he debated Palin he'd be discussing her
existence. Again, the thought is not correctly transferred. To get the
thought correctly transferred you need the right grammar.
Biden will debate with Palin. [I believe “Biden will debate against
Palin” would be less likely to be misinterpreted.]
And someone may quite easily debate the subject of Shakespeare or the
subject of Palin without ever discussing whether they actually existed
or not.
See http://www.bartleby.com/61/19/D0061900.html . “Debate” is both a
transitive and intransitive verb. That is one of the reason why
apparently contradictory meanings may be extracted from grammatically
correct utterances.
“Again, the thought is not correctly transferred.”
You may believe that the thought *should* not be correctly transferred.
But what if it *is* correctly transferred to anyone who knows who Biden
and Palin are? Context *is* important.
That is why modern grammarians generally eschew artificial examples.
Instead they search through texts to find what grammar is being used and
understood and why they tape dialogues between subjects to attempt to
see what forms are being used and understood.
Jim Allan
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