Television Without Pity Quote (Grammar)

[fabrisse]

Because everyone's gone all grammatical in the past week, I thought this was appropriate.

Miss Alli in her Amazing Race recap this week says:

"They close with one of my favorite grammatical forms, the irrelevant-disjunctive, when they say that people will think they're ditzy, but it's a game."

I'm hereby applying for the irrelevant-disjunctive to be an actual tense. I'll settle for it just being a mood, like the subjunctive, but really, it's so much more useful than that.

Favorite examples?

Comments

[siderea]

I think I would very much like the irrelevant-disjunctive if I had a better grasp on it. What makes the above example a valid one?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

In this particular case, they were not referring to the ditziness being a game. They were referring to the game they were in fact playing The Amazing Race.

You're right, though, a pure example may only exist in the laboratory (as that one could be taken to mean that their acting ditzy was the game).

It's not quite a case of non-sequiturs occuring. The irrelevant-disjunctive must be something that the speakers think are relevant together, but aren't.

;-)

Popcorn!

[siderea]

Ah! Maybe this is an example.

According to dorm lore, one day a group of dormmates were sitting in the lounge discoursing upon the deep philosophical question, "If you were a food, what food would you be?" In flounced a woman I will refer to as "Muffy", who tossed her hair and proclaimed, "Popcorn!" There was a stunned silence -- that was an unprecidented level of honesty for such a trite game. Someone gathered himself and asked, "Popcorn?" "You were discussing food, right?" said Muffy. "Popcorn's my favorite food!" And she flounced back out. Everyone dissolved in hysteria.

Re: Popcorn!

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I love it. Yes. That's it.

Re: Popcorn!

[moria923.livejournal.com]

If I make a statement and join two thoughts together, and you, the listener, don't see how those two thoughts relate to each other, that doesn't mean there is no connection; it just means that I haven't adequately communicated my train of thought, or that you haven't understood it.

In the TWOP example, the thought seems to have been something like: "People may think we look ditzy, but it's a game, * and it's OK to look ditzy while playing a game." * So if the listener hears an "irrelevant disjunctive", it means she didn't get the speaker's implied chain of reasoning.

Great popcorn story! thorbol and I were just having some fun with the different ways it can be interpreted. My own take is that it can't qualify as an "irrelevant disjunctive" because it involves more than one speaker. It seems you need one speaker connecting two thoughts that seem unconnected to the listener.

Actually, this may qualify as the OPPOSITE of anirrelevant subjunctive. When Muffy says "popcorn" and her listeners think her comment "remarkably honest", it is because the listeners are implying a chain of reasoning that the speaker has not intended.