Take this broken grammar and learn to fly

April 17, 2008 1:33 PM

GrammarFilter: I was listening to "Blackbird" by the Beatles recently, and was struck by the line: "You were only waiting for this moment to arise." I was intrigued by the way the phrase "to arise" has sort of an ambiguous function here.

Depending on how you read it, the sentence could mean either:

You were just waiting for the arrival of this particular moment, or

In order for you to arise, this moment had to come about.

In other words (if this makes sense so far) the predicate phrase "to arise" can have as its subject either "you" or "this moment".

Funnily enough, I heard another example of this kind of grammatical ambiguousness later that night, when I encouraged my wife to get in bed by herself since she was much more tired than I was at that early hour of the evening. She responded:

"But I need you to go to sleep."

Again, her sentence could have meant either "In order for me to go to sleep, I need you," or "It is important for me that YOU go to sleep" (even though that would be sort of a weird thing for her to insist on).

So I'm wondering: Is there a specific grammatical term (or two different terms, maybe?) for the way an infinitive ("to arise," "to sleep," etc.) performs these two different functions in a sentence?

posted by AngerBoy to writing & language (26 comments total)

I always thought it was "You were only waiting for this moment to arrive."
posted by jozxyqk at 1:37 PM on April 17

Yeah, I thought it was "arrive," too. I still think it's "arrive."
posted by The World Famous at 1:44 PM on April 17

My favorite example of this is from Bob Dylan's "If You See Her, Say Hello":

"If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so."

Don't tell her that he has not forgotten her?
Or don't tell her that he has forgotten her, because he hasn't?
posted by Perplexity at 1:45 PM on April 17

I think "ambiguity" is the right word to describe this sort of thing; that's what I was taught in my linguistics class. There are different types of ambiguity, though, check out some discussion here.

I think the ones you describe might be lexical or structural (and I think it applies whether the word is "arise" or "arrive.")
posted by sarahnade at 1:46 PM on April 17

@jozxyqk and @The World Famous:
Well, okay, and that might make a stronger argument in favor of the first explanation - but it's still at least a little bit ambiguous (i.e. you wouldn't arrive before this particular moment).

Still hoping for some good grammar-geekery. :O)
posted by AngerBoy at 1:49 PM on April 17

You are talking about syntactic ambiguity. It is found in all human languages and is far more common than you think, but thanks to powerful human brains and context we don't see it most of the time.

See "time flies like an arrow"...
posted by Alison at 1:49 PM on April 17

Perplexity's example is something different, and the meaning depends on the punctuation.

"Don't tell her it isn't so." is different from "Don't tell her. It isn't so."
posted by Dec One at 1:54 PM on April 17

There are two common types of ambiguity in natural languages: structural and lexical. The latter is when a lexical item (e.g. a word) has multiple meanings, and the sentence could have different meanings depending on which word meaning is intended. For example, "I bought a bat" could mean I bought a flying pet or a baseball bat. The ambiguity in the "to arise" example is structural. If you drew out the syntactic tree for each meaning, the trees would look different although the "leaves" at the end of the tree branches are in the same order. In the "to arise" example, the ambiguity turns on which noun phrase the verb ultimately attaches to -- "you" or "this moment".

Some fun can be had with structural ambiguity and parsing sentences. We typically start to construct the tree for the sentence before we hear the end, and sometimes we have to back up and start a new tree when we can no longer parse. These are called "garden path" sentences. Some examples:

The horse raced past the barn fell.
The man served the rare steak complained.
I know the words to that song don't rhyme.
I promised my friend from Aruba would go skiing.

Anyway, you've discovered a neat example and I'll probably use it in future classes!
posted by tractorfeed at 1:59 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]

seconding dec one on the punctuation. the punctuation is incorrect throughout the song, so there's no telling what was intended in that last line.

re: "blackbird"-- i thought it was "arrive" as well.
posted by thinkingwoman at 1:59 PM on April 17

For what it's worth, I saw a great home movie clip of John Lennon & family on vacation somewhere in the wilds of America, and some tripping hippie randomly runs into them. The camera is rolling as John tries to talk the trippie down, and there's this great moment where the guy says something like:

"But how did you get all that MEANING into your lyrics?"

John replied, "They're only words, man."

Best Beatles Moment Ever.
posted by Aquaman at 2:03 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]

I thought it was "to be free." Still has the same ambiguity, though.
posted by owtytrof at 2:03 PM on April 17

I think that in Perplexity's case, it's:
"She might think that I've forgotten her; don't tell her, it isn't so."
(It being "forgotten" with an implied [that] at the end of "don't tell her" -- i.e., Don't tell her that I've forgotten her, because I haven't, even though she - and possibly you - think that I have.)

Also, it is definitely "arise" in the lyrics, not "arrive," as some people posit above. Unfortunately, I don't know the particular phrase for that peculiar grammatic structure.
posted by k8lin at 2:09 PM on April 17

google seems to agree with the orginal poster's lyric.
posted by mdn at 2:13 PM on April 17

I thought it was "to be free."

It is, in the next verse.

I have a book with a punctuation example as the title. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Or Eats Shoots and Leaves. Funny, I can't remember which way the title actually is. There's a panda on the cover.

Like the song Don't Dream, It's Over. Or, Don't Dream It's Over. Hey now.
posted by Pax at 2:16 PM on April 17

By the way, if you take the agent of the uninflected verb "to arise" (or arrive, whatever) to be "this moment", then you're dealing with what is called a small clause. These typically appear in subordinate position, not in main clauses. The wikipedia Small clause article gives more examples.

The small clause in the lyric is "this moment to arise."
posted by tractorfeed at 2:19 PM on April 17

This is amphibology. You might find other applicable terms in this excellent catalogue of figures of speech.
posted by ourobouros at 2:26 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]

Isn't the classic example of this kind of ambiguity the sentence:
Woman without her man is nothing
depending on where you punctuate there are two very different statements.
Woman. Without her, man is nothing.
or
Woman, without her man, is nothing.
something like that, anyway.
posted by Grod at 2:31 PM on April 17

"Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave/ o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
posted by No-sword at 3:12 PM on April 17

My thinking went to Syntactic Ambiguity as well.

Also, I agree that the lyric is "arise", after listening several times just now, but I always thought it was 'arrive', like many others here. I don't think I was high as you whilst listening, though. =P
posted by chudmonkey at 3:27 PM on April 17

There's also a nice example of this in the song "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" by Stars, where the delivery by the singers plays a big part. The words (without punctuation) are:

I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say

When you hear them sing it, the first time they're saying "I'm not sorry that there is nothing to say" and the second time they're saying, "I'm not sorry. There's nothing to say."
posted by winston at 3:30 PM on April 17

You should ask Geoffrey Pullum of Language Log. He's really strong on this kind of stuff.
posted by fantasticninety at 3:46 PM on April 17

As a bit of an aside, Charlie Manson had his opinion on this particular lyric.
posted by zoinks at 5:34 PM on April 17

What is this thing called love?
What, is this thing called love?
What is this, Thing Called Love?
What is this thing called, Love?
posted by Holly at 6:00 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]

I agree with whoever said that it is the moment that arose, not the blackbird. Connoting a sort of positive biding of time. The blackbird knew that someday, there would be a moment for her to spread her wings and fly, and that moment arose. Their use of "arise" was artful because it does have the secondary meaning.
posted by gjc at 7:33 PM on April 17

This might seem kind of vauge, but wat if there is a third option? Can a moment ARISE to something bigger? Or would one say RAISE to something bigger? Reading: You were only waiting for the moment you're in to elevate into something bigger. But then again; can one wait for something inside the space of a moment? English is not my native language, so I'm not 100% clear on every definition of the word "moment".
posted by SurrenderMonkey at 9:44 AM on April 18

I ran into a professor yesterday whose specialty is ambiguity, so I gave him your sentences and we talked them over, and I confirmed the proposed structures with another prof who likes syntax a bit more. Conclusion: The most specific name for the ambiguity is structural ambiguity, but you can name the two structures it's ambiguous between for more precision. And then I started noticing all the other ambiguities that support or are supported by the structural one ... gory details follow.

I'll start with "I need you to go to sleep" because it's simpler. The crucial difference in the structure is this:

I [_VP need [_CP you to go to sleep]]
I [_VP [_V' need you] [_CP to go to sleep]]

where VP is a Verb Phrase, V' ("V-bar") is a plausible VP to which something else is added, and CP is a Complementizer Phrase (essentially, a wrapper around a whole clause that lets it plug into another one).

The 'complementizer' name is apt in the first case, because the CP really is the complement of the verb; "you to go to sleep" is what "I need." Its function in the sentence is non-finite complement clause. In the second case the nomenclature is not so good; the complement of "need" there is just "you," and "to go to sleep" is instead a modifier, more specifically a non-finite postmodifier clause of purpose.

Actually, the influential Government and Binding theory of syntax would say that the difference between the readings hinges on the presence or absence of a silent pronoun, notated as PRO. In Government and Binding the second reading above would be I [_VP [_V' need you] [_CP PRO to go to sleep]]. I will skip over the theoretical justification for the existence of PRO and the 'Control Theory' that explains how we know that PRO means 'I', partly because you don't care and partly because I don't really remember. Suffice it to say, first, that Government and Binding proposes several other silent elements in these sentences (the Complementizer that heads up the CP, the Inflection that gives tense to "need" and subject case to "I"), and second, that of course the presence or absence of a silent word can be pretty darned ambiguous. So if you subscribed to GB, you could call it a postmodifier PRO-specified clause vs. complement clause ambiguity or more generally a PRO-presence ambiguity. Yay for slightly pretentious labels.

Onward to Macca. The 'Blackbird' example is a little more complicated, but the core of it is exactly the same: Either the complement of "waiting" is "for this moment to arise," or it's just "for this moment" and "to arise" is a postmodifier—"PRO to arise," if that's what you're into. Here, I'll bracket it.

you were [_VP only waiting [_CP for this moment to arise]]
you were [_VP only waiting [_PP for this moment] [_CP PRO to arise]]

Wait a minute, what the heck is going on with "for" there? You've plainly got a Prepositional Phrase in "for this moment" in the second one—but pray tell, what is "for" doing in the CP up top?

Well, it turns out "for" can be a Complementizer, as well as a Preposition. Remember how Government and Binding said there were silent complementizers hanging around earlier? Try it on in their place: "I need for you to go to sleep" is fine. "I need you for to go to sleep" may not be standard, but it's certainly still English (in a way that, say, *"I need you to go to for sleep" is not). We'll say that's categorial ambiguity.

There is also some ambiguity surrounding "only"—semantically, does it apply to "waiting" or "this moment" or "to arise" or what? The usual term for those kinds of questions is 'scope', so let's call this scoping ambiguity. And another, minor structural question in the postmodifier construction: Does "only" attach below "to arise" or above it? I say above, but that's only because I see its scope as covering "waiting" and everything after it, which in turn is based on inferences about the purpose of the statement, which in turn come from the meaning of the whole rest of the song. (At some point this stops being a linguistic question and starts being a literary one. Where that point is depends on who you ask.)

Come to think of it, there's yet another structure for "I need you to go to sleep" and it's a doozy:

I [_VP [_V' need [_CP you to go]] [_CP PRO to sleep]]

Colloquially, "I need you to go for to sleep" or even "I need for you to go for to sleep." And in this structure it's no longer clear whether it's you or me that's supposed to be asleep after you go! We'll call that anaphoric ambiguity. (Nor is it clear whether "to go" means 'to depart' or 'to excrete', which is maybe lexical ambiguity).

In the original two structures given above, "to sleep" was arguably a Prepositional Phrase attached to "go", comprising a Preposition and a Noun, but "to" and "sleep" are both categorially ambiguous (Inflection/Preposition and Verb/Noun respectively), and that helps give rise to the structural and semantic ambiguities on higher levels. Compare "I need you to go to camp," and contrast "I need you to go to Kentucky" and "I need you to go to buy me a burrito."

Conclusion: Ambiguity is everywhere. Look out.

Due credit to: Dallin D. Oaks, for initial discussion of the complement/postmodifier roles. Alan D. Manning, for verifying the structures and pointing out the Complementizer use of "for." PRO, for being its invisible, ubiquitous, incomprehensible self.
posted by eritain at 7:12 PM on May 15