They haven't proven they're not afraid of anyone not named Bumgarner. Or have they?
« previous post | next post »
Bob Nightengale, "Forget 1985, these Royals on verge of their own history", USA Today 10/29/2014:
It's been a wild ride for these two teams. They had to win an elimination game as a wild-card entrant just to get into this dance. Now, one will be hoisting the World Series championship trophy.
The Royals certainly haven't proven they're not afraid of anyone not named Madison Bumgarner. Considering that he just threw 117 pitches in Game 5, Giants manager Bruce Bochy reiterated, that he will not be starting the game. He likely won't be available to pitch more than two, perhaps three innings of relief.
I'm not sure whether "The Royals certainly haven't proven they're not afraid of anyone not named Madison Bumgarner" comes out right or not, because I can't figure out what it's supposed to mean, much less whether it succeeds in meaning it. Either way, it belongs in our misnegation archive. Commenters are welcome to enlighten us all.
[h/t Jack Maloney]
Morten Jonsson said,
October 29, 2014 @ 4:07 pm
It looks like just one negation too many. It makes perfect sense as "The Royals have certainly proven that they're not afraid of anyone not named Madison Bumgarner," i.e., the only Giants pitcher they're scared of is Madison Bumgarner.
David L said,
October 29, 2014 @ 4:36 pm
Oh, I took it to mean exactly the opposite: the Royals haven't established that they are not afraid of the Giants' other pitchers – the ones not named Bumgarner.
Lazar said,
October 29, 2014 @ 4:47 pm
My first reaction was, of course, simple incomprehension, but on second approach I parse it like David. The Royals would be saying, "We are, indeed, afraid of Bumgarner, but any of those guys that aren't named Bumgarner, we're not afraid of them." And the author would be saying, "You haven't proven that."
Rubrick said,
October 29, 2014 @ 4:58 pm
As a side note, I'm not entirely clear what it means to be on the verge of one's own history.
Mr Fnortner said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:03 pm
What can be said about agreement between the noun as modifier and its associated noun? We have 'woman doctor' and 'women doctors'. Why? Why not 'woman doctors'? We don't say 'windows seats', 'cellars doors' or 'eyes doctors' do we?
Mr Fnortner said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:03 pm
Disregard the previous comment as the relic of another post.
"Considering that he just threw 117 pitches in Game 5, Giants manager Bruce Bochy reiterated, that he will not be starting the game." Sounds like manager Bochy is too tired from all that pitching to start the next game.
John Baker said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:25 pm
I'm with David L.: It is implied that the Royals assert that they are not afraid of anyone (Bumgarner aside). The Royals have not, however, proven this assertion.
It isn't clear from the quoted sentence whether the Royals admit to being afraid of Bumgarner (or at least don't deny it), or if the writer instead thinks that the Royals have indeed proven that they are not afraid of Bumgarner. The context of the article, however, shows that the former meaning is intended.
Steve said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:38 pm
I think the context of the article supports Morten Jonsson's take: the indented meaning is thT the Royals have proven they don't fear the non-Bumgarners, meaning there is a misnegation.
This paragraph in particular supports that view:
While Bumgarner is 2-0 with a .56 ERA in his two starts, the rest of the Giants' rotation is 0-3 with a 9.82 ERA in this series, surrendering 28 bases in 14 2/3 innings.
In other words, the Royals have clobbered all of the non-Bumgarner pitchers, and thus have proven they don't fear them (no comment regarding Bumgarner himself).
There is a leap of logic there: a batter could irritationally fear a pitcher even if he has done well against him, so the Royals' collectively strong performance against non-Bumgarners does not really prove non-fear of them. But nothing in the article (aside from the sentence with way too many nots in it) suggests that the Royals fear the non-Bumgarners despite having hammered them, nor does anything suggests that the author thinks they secretly fear the non-Bumgarners despite their repeated success against them. So I think the most reasonable interpretation in context is that there is a misnegation error and the author believes the Royals have proven non-fear of non-Bumgarners.
James said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:39 pm
Well, I think David L is right about what the sentence means, but I suspect Morten Jonsson is right about what the author intended to say.
(It would be strange to say that the Royals have failed to demonstrate that they don't fear Jake Peavy, given what else the author says about how they handled Peavy last time.)
Steve said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:39 pm
Yikes. Intended, not indented. There are probabky other auto-correct and other errors in there, too.
James said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:40 pm
Oh, Steve posted while I was typing.
I am certain Steve is correct about the indented meaning, though!
{-)
Daniel Barkalow said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:40 pm
The literal meaning I get for that statement is that they sometimes lose games where Bumgarner doesn't pitch. The question is whether the implied contrast has one or two fewer negations in different scopes. Would you add, "…but they have proven they aren't afraid of Bumgerner" (wrong) or "…but they have proven they are afraid of Bumgarner" (right)? In any case, I think it says the statement as written says that they might lose despite not having to face Bumgarner, which fits with the rest of the article. It's subtly completely wishy-washy, but any other quantity of negatives would just be wrong.
Chris C. said,
October 29, 2014 @ 5:46 pm
@Rubrick — "As a side note, I'm not entirely clear what it means to be on the verge of one's own history."
It strikes me as a tautology. As we live in the present, which will in a moment become the past, and therefore part of our personal histories, all of us are on the verge of our own histories.
Dan said,
October 29, 2014 @ 6:38 pm
@Chris C: The word "history" in this context means something like "historic achievement," a common usage is sports journalism.
Keith said,
October 30, 2014 @ 2:27 am
Not proving that they're not afraid is not the same as having proven that they are afraid; absence of proof is not the same as disculpation. So all we're left with is the idea that the Royals might be afraid of whatever is about to be presented later in the sentence.
That just leaves us to parse "anyone not named Madison Bumgarner", which is just any other player.
So, "The Royals might be scared of any of the players", but I don't know if this fear is in addition to, or in contrast to, any fear or lack of fear of Bumgarner. But since we're told that Bumgarner won't be playing anyway, that doesn't matter.
Finally, we're left with "the Royals might be scared of any Giants pitcher". The Royals might be scared of their own shadows, for all I know.
Akito said,
October 30, 2014 @ 6:45 am
Some of the posts deal with the negations in the embedded clauses first and go to the main clause last, saying "And all of that hasn't been proven," or something to that effect. In languages like English, you don't know what is being negated until you hear/read the rest of the sentence. Which seems to suggest that misnegations and misinterpretations of multiple negations are less likely to occur in left-branching languages. I am no expert and cannot offer any evidence, but that's my intuition.
Peking Man said,
October 30, 2014 @ 7:23 am
Re "Considering that he just threw 117 pitches …": Though not a baseball fan, I thought 100 pitches was a lot. Then I finished reading the sentence and realized that 'just' here means 'a little while ago' not 'barely'.
MattF said,
October 30, 2014 @ 8:15 am
It's interesting that both 'straight' and mis-negated interpretations are plausible. I am pretty sure, though, that the author was confused.
Robert Coren said,
October 30, 2014 @ 9:47 am
@Mr Fnortner: '"Considering that he just threw 117 pitches in Game 5, Giants manager Bruce Bochy reiterated, that he will not be starting the game." Sounds like manager Bochy is too tired from all that pitching to start the next game.'
Bochy may have been too tired, but Bumgarner clearly was not; he ended up pitching five innings.
Gregory Kusnick said,
October 30, 2014 @ 12:38 pm
Can we talk about that comma after reiterated?
To me it creates a garden path in which the second instance of that is jarringly superfluous:
Wendy said,
October 30, 2014 @ 10:16 pm
Shades of Bilbo's birthday speech. "But most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment."
John said,
October 31, 2014 @ 9:02 am
"The Royals certainly haven't proven they're not afraid of anyone not named Madison Bumgarner."
So, (1) they've been accused of being afraid of anyone not named Madison Childish-Snigger — which I take to mean they're seen as overusing him, not having faith in the rest of the team. (2) They want to prove that this is untrue; they're not "afraid" of the others, they're perfectly happy to play a game without relying on that one player. (3) They are failing to convincingly make that case, because they're still overusing him.
If that's true (don't know anything about the context), I think it makes sense logically. But terrible phrasing, obviously.
January First-of-May said,
November 1, 2014 @ 6:33 pm
@Mr Fnortner's relic comment: "woman doctors" would be the doctors who work with women (and even then it could well end up as "women doctors").
[Unrelatedly, I don't like the way Language Log had started closing comments after only a few weeks (I think that wasn't the case yet as late as last year). Anyone knows why this happened?]
Somewhat more on-topic, I've understood it that they're not afraid of the other guys, and I agree that David's version in the second comment is the only one that makes sense literally.
(Also, that's the first time I've heard of a guy named Madison – my understanding is that the name hadn't existed as a first name at all until relatively recently, but even then it was almost entirely female – and until I've seen enough mentions of it in comments to get it properly, I was reading the last name as Baumgartner.)
Ngamudgi said,
November 5, 2014 @ 11:04 pm
Cricket is simpler.