Larry Kudlow Thinks Teachers Make $120,000 Yearly

[Igel]

5. It's a stupid game.

Because as soon as people are in an argument, they manipulate the resources grammar makes available to suit them. Listeners go stupid. Speakers go Machiavelli.

Compare two examples. This one, with "teachers make $120k/year" and another one, "Economists support minimum wage increase."

Look at grammar: English bare plurals. "Cats have 4 legs" is true, but a 3-legged cat is a cat. It's prototypical and creates no problems. "Humans need oxygen" is exhaustive--all humans need oxygens. If I say "only African-American study Hausa," Hinnebusch would for sure say, "That's not true: Whites study Hausa". Why? Because there are whites that study Hausa. It's not prototypical (few whites study Hausa), and it's not exhaustive (not all whites study Hausa).

If I say "boys like girls" it's controversial. Not because there are boys who like girls, but because there are boys who like boys. Some will assume that the only interpretation is "all boys like girls" and that must be fought. They will often resent the interpretation that "in general boys like girls" because that sets up a norm, a prototypical situation, and a boy who likes another boy is then a-prototypical, non-normal. Those opposed to gay rights will be just as happy to interpret it that way because it suits his/her agenda. The grammar is clearly underspecified.

So "economists support minimum wage increase" is jubilantly taken on DU to mean "all." It says nothing of the sort. If it's accuracy is challenged, naming two economists who agree with with (Krugman, Stiglitz) establishes its accuracy. Then we'll go back to assuming that it means "all economists" having failed to actually establish that but wanting it to be true. It takes a certain amount of mental discipline to *not* lapse back into thinking it means "all economists"--at the very least we'll take it to mean "most" or "the ones that matter". A (R) will likely take umbrage with that interpretation, and may accuse the statement "economists support a MW increase" to be false because one interpretation is false; he may accuse the speaker of being misleading. (The speaker *may* be misleading, but esp. if newspaper-speak it's just telegraphic.)

The same is at play with "teachers make $120k/year." It's a bare plural. It's not prototypical, to be sure--the pay is near the top of the range in high-pay areas, and off-the-scale in most areas. It's certainly not exhaustive (I'm a counterexample, so it's obvious to me that it can't mean "all teachers&quot . But it's also completely factual under the reading that "there exist at least two teachers who make $120k/year." After all, the grammar is underspecified--it's not the utterance that's false or true, it's what we understand the utterance to mean.

But that's all listener-side. Speaker-side the same game is played. Often a politician, "news analyst," or just some poster on DU will use a bare plural knowing full well that it will be misunderstood but is still true in some licit reading. Sometimes s/he'll use it because his/her thinking is just sloppy and the idea that some =/= all eludes them as they're trying to construct a sentence. The problem is that most people are really bad at sorting out the effect of context. Usually looking at context makes clear if the speaker has in mind "all" or "some," has in mind a prototypical usage or is just contrasting "some" against an assumed "none." Our horrible habit of decontextualizing speech that's not intended to be decontextualized, or of assuming the worst context for foes and the best context for friends, both lead to unnecessary verbiage.

Saying that listeners go stupid and speakers go Machiavelli is, to be honest, giving them both the benefit of the doubt. Of course, in using the bare plural I'm assuming that readers will take the context into account: Here I mean "some, perhaps many," neither limiting myself to having two test cases to base the factuality of the statement on, nor asserting that it's the case all listeners and speakers in every context are both stupid/Machiavellian or even that it's prototypical.