Noncompositional

Last Friday, comedian Al Lubel did a routine on Letterman. The last bit of his segment made some interesting linguistic observations, especially regarding street/warning signs. Of course, instructional and directive language in English is subject to some grammatical principles that are absent in the rest of the language, including allowing null instantiation of stuff that is usually required. Taking some examples from the closest cookbook at hand, Healthy Asian Vegetarian Dishes (gaps shown with –):

Halve the squash lengthwise. Slice — into 1/2-in (1-cm) slices. Combine all the sauce ingredients, stirring — to break up the beancurd, then set — aside. Pour in the water … . Transfer — to serving dish and garnish — with toasted sesame seeds, if desired.

Lubel makes some related, though rather different observations. First, he relates an encounter he had with a bookstore security guard, who told him to stop (loitering and) reading magazines. The guard pointed to a sign, which read “Please do not read.” Lubel said to the guard, “Oh, I thought it meant the sign.” Besides the ridiculousness of sending a message that says “please do not receive this message,” his observation also relies on how null complements are to be interpreted (here I assume that a verb like read has a null-instantiated semantic object even in its “unergative” use). The same sort of thing can be observed with a sign in a museum like “Please do not touch.” Such a sign could appear as a general announcement, or near pieces of art, or even on each piece of art. The ambiguity would remain in each case but the last. Actually, I think they may be three-ways ambiguous between do not touch this (thing that the message is inscribed on), do not touch the salient touchable thing, and just don’t touch anything, ever; hopefully context will help the museum-goer better than they would Lubel.

(This also reminds me of the semantics of demonstratives and labels, as in pointing to a label on the lid of a jar of mustard and saying either “this is the letter ‘m’,” “this is a label,” “this is the lid,” “this is a jar,” or “this is mustard.” Or, similarly, a label on a jar of mustard that reads “jar” or “lid.”)

He then goes on to remark on the “wordiness” of a sign that reads No Parking Any Time. Lubel says that the “any time” is at best redundant, or at least assumes a rather stupid driver, who might read “no parking” and wonder, “but what about Friday at 3 pm?” He compares this a hypothetical wordy stop sign that would read Stop here every time, picking up on the deictic properties of commands. I especially like the “every time,” which, I think, shows he was possibly taking the point of view of the stop sign: “I make cars stop here every time (one appears).” Or, he was taking the driver’s perspective but he was thinking not just about multiple encounters with any stop sign, but with multiple encounters with the same stop sign (okay, I suppose there’s a sort of blend of the two versions, where all stop signs are physical instantiations a single abstract entity that follows drivers around and speaks up at various intersections).

Finally, he returns to the parking sign, doing some further pragmatic wonk. He observes that what people are doing when they are figuring out where to park is wondering, “can I park here?” This implicit question should lead sign-designers to create parking signs that read simply No. While certainly less wordy, such a sign would be considerably more trouble to understand. Imagine that: sometimes more words is less confusing.