Pedants' Paradise

[vinteuil]

.

... I learnt to read very early, and as a consequence often encountered words in print before having had a chance to hear them.

I still recall the hot flush of mortification as my elder brothers teased me for pronouncing -

. mishap as if it rhymed with bishop

. misled as if were myzl'd

[french frank]

I suppose it looks odd because of the double s,

Though the ss doesn't bother me (misspell - which Lat used in that same post) or mis-spell?). And EMISSIONS doesn't seem a problem either.

But 'to misspeak' does present some interest for its use rather than its spelling - but, yes, its long history came as a surprise.

Vint - yes, we said mizzled.

[Lat-Literal]

.

... I learnt to read very early, and as a consequence often encountered words in print before having had a chance to hear them.

I still recall the hot flush of mortification as my elder brothers teased me for pronouncing -

. mishap as if it rhymed with bishop

. misled as if were myzl'd

Because I use YT so much I find the same thing happens to me with composers' names. When eventually I do hear them on the radio etc, I am often very surprised by the pronunciation. This was the topic of a thread some years ago in which french frank helped with some of those pronunciations. I don't always remember the right way though!

Though the ss doesn't bother me (misspell - which Lat used in that same post) or mis-spell?). And EMISSIONS doesn't seem a problem either.

But 'to misspeak' does present some interest for its use rather than its spelling - but, yes, its long history came as a surprise.

Vint - yes, we said mizzled.

I included that word as a literary device to balance the presentation while emphasizing the point. Think that was the gist of it. I didn't analyse it quite in that way but it seemed a natural thing to do. As for "EMISSIONS", it is something that might be to do with one consonant and later two consonants surrounded by vowels. I have come across other words which especially when written in capitals appear to be lacking a consonant. It is an optical illusion as it is also obvious it would look worse - and wrong - with another consonant.

Occasionally I am thrown by the spell check. It started off in my post as "misspelt" but that had a red wavy line below it. One that often catches me out is "manoeuvre". The point about composers' names also applies to sports people's names - for example on football transfer days when players arrive from other parts of the world. I read about them first.

[Serial_Apologist]

Question: what do you do when you have a misspoke on your bike?

Answer: go to a spokesperson!

[Serial_Apologist]

A heated argument between two women on a bus I was travelling on the other day ended when one of them stood up to leave, saying, "I'm not a racist - I promise!" Having recovered my composure, this got me thinking, and reminded me of when, as I child, my father told me that it was impossible to promise anything that one had done in the past, since promises only applied to the future. I think he was probably right, but one often hears people use the term in the way which that woman was using it.

[french frank]

Well, Serial, I hardly like to contradict something your father said (esp. as I would - vaguely - have felt he probably had a sort of point. But our OED saith:

3. trans. and intr. colloq. With subordinate clause as object or parenthetically within or after a statement: to convey assurance of some fact; to assert confidently or emphatically; to declare. Chiefly with indirect object in I promise you: ‘I assure you’, ‘I tell you plainly’.

A heated argument between two women on a bus I was travelling on the other day ended when one of them stood up to leave, saying, "I'm not a racist - I promise!" Having recovered my composure, this got me thinking, and reminded me of when, as I child, my father told me that it was impossible to promise anything that one had done in the past, since promises only applied to the future. I think he was probably right, but one often hears people use the term in the way which that woman was using it.

[vinteuil]

.

... tho' OED has examples of "promise" = "to convey assurance of some fact, to assert confidently or emphatically, to declare" with no sense of a future sense - from as far back as 1469; - Shakespeare in 'Much Ado [1599] "I do not lyke thy looke, I promise thee..." ; also Addison, Fielding, Thackeray...

[jean]

I wonder if we have forgotten this meaning since Austin's Speech Act Theory:

...In order to define performatives, Austin refers to those sentences which conform to the old prejudice in that they are used to describe or constate something, and which thus are true or false; and he calls such sentences "constatives". In contrast to them, Austin defines "performatives" as follows:

(1) Performative utterances are not true or false, that is, not truth-evaluable; instead when something is wrong with them then they are "unhappy", while if nothing is wrong they are "happy".
(2) The uttering of a performative is, or is part of, the doing of a certain kind of action (Austin later deals with them under the name illocutionary acts), the performance of which, again, would not normally be described as just "saying" or "describing" something (cf. Austin 1962, 5).

For example, when Peter says "I promise to do the dishes" in an appropriate context then he thereby does not just say something, and in particular he does not describe what he is doing; rather, in making the utterance he performs the promise; since promising is an illocutionary act, the utterance is thus a performative utterance. If Peter utters the sentence without the intention to keep the promise, or if eventually he does not keep it, then although something is not in order with the utterance, the problem is not that the sentence is false: it is rather "unhappy", or "infelicitous", as Austin also says in his discussion of so-called felicity conditions. In the absence of any such flaw, on the other hand, the utterance is to be assessed as "happy" or "felicitous", rather than as "true". Austin dropped this distinction in favour of a distinction between explicit performatives ("I promise it will never happen again") and primary or implicit performatives ("It will never happen again," functioning as a promise)...

[Serial_Apologist]

I wonder if we have forgotten this meaning since Austin's Speech Act Theory:

...In order to define performatives, Austin refers to those sentences which conform to the old prejudice in that they are used to describe or constate something, and which thus are true or false; and he calls such sentences "constatives". In contrast to them, Austin defines "performatives" as follows:

(1) Performative utterances are not true or false, that is, not truth-evaluable; instead when something is wrong with them then they are "unhappy", while if nothing is wrong they are "happy".
(2) The uttering of a performative is, or is part of, the doing of a certain kind of action (Austin later deals with them under the name illocutionary acts), the performance of which, again, would not normally be described as just "saying" or "describing" something (cf. Austin 1962, 5).

For example, when Peter says "I promise to do the dishes" in an appropriate context then he thereby does not just say something, and in particular he does not describe what he is doing; rather, in making the utterance he performs the promise; since promising is an illocutionary act, the utterance is thus a performative utterance. If Peter utters the sentence without the intention to keep the promise, or if eventually he does not keep it, then although something is not in order with the utterance, the problem is not that the sentence is false: it is rather "unhappy", or "infelicitous", as Austin also says in his discussion of so-called felicity conditions. In the absence of any such flaw, on the other hand, the utterance is to be assessed as "happy" or "felicitous", rather than as "true". Austin dropped this distinction in favour of a distinction between explicit performatives ("I promise it will never happen again") and primary or implicit performatives ("It will never happen again," functioning as a promise)...

Phew! - but thanks! I'd always thought of promising something as putatively holding oneself in the presence of another or others to honest commitment of intent; but I can see it has other meanings now.

[Lat-Literal]

.

... tho' OED has examples of "promise" = "to convey assurance of some fact, to assert confidently or emphatically, to declare" with no sense of a future sense - from as far back as 1469; - Shakespeare in 'Much Ado [1599] "I do not lyke thy looke, I promise thee..." ; also Addison, Fielding, Thackeray...

Immediately I thought of "assurance" which is in the past, present or future. A promissory note is a form of future assurance but I don't know if the derivation is similar? "I promise you I am not racist" has a hint of ordinary folk's speech patterns when denying naughtiness. "Did you deliberately kick that football through his window?" "No, I promise" which in turn brings to mind "I swear". And onward that suggests something almost judicial about it all. It is a question of honour. But then perhaps all of what I am saying here is nonsense.

(Actually when I think of it, there could be an aligning of two thoughts on that bus - "not racist" in utterance, "maybe I am" in thought and note to self not to be racist in the future!)

[gurnemanz]

Reading all this makes me think of the current buzz phrase "trust me" which is used in a similar way and nowadays sprinkled around liberally in conversation.

[Pabmusic]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

[Padraig]

.. the current buzz phrase "trust me" which is used in a similar way and nowadays sprinkled around liberally in conversation.

...and the danger this kind of thing poses for conversation cannot be underestimated.

[jean]

Reading all this makes me think of the current buzz phrase "trust me"...

The demotic version is 'I'm not being funny...'

[Sir Velo]

...and the danger this kind of thing poses for conversation cannot be underestimated.

You mean it has a negligible impact on conversation?