Metaphysical overlap and violin supervenience
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Ismael Tohari emailed me from Saudi Arabia to ask this:
Sorry to bother you but… I really find it very hard to pinpoint any difference between the two sentences below:
[1] He was playing a violin when the visitor arrived.
[2] He was playing the violin when the visitor arrived.
A fascinating question. I wonder if you can see what the difference in meaning is, and why it is so tricky to specify?
In everything I say from now on, I will ignore the possibility that [2] might mean that there is some unique identifiable violin, perhaps one that we have already discussed, and he was playing that one. That's a possible meaning, but I don't think Ismael was interested in it. Let's assume that no unique identifiable violin is in play. Both [1] and [2] are simply saying that he was engaged in violin-playing when the visitor arrived. What's the difference?
This is what I told Ismael. If you view violin as a count noun denoting individual objects 4-stringed objects with f-holes, then if he was playing a particular one of those objects, sentence [1] is appropriate. But you can also view violin as referring to a sort of abstract object, the species of musical instrument known by that name around the world. In that case the claim is that he was participating in a sort of worldwide fraternity of violinists by engaging in the relevant activity. No particular violin is relevant. And that makes the second sentence acceptable.
Since it doesn't matter much which view of violin-playing you take — whether it's playing one particular fiddle or participating in the global community of violinists — little difference between the two is perceived at first.
Yet in a sense, the difference is there in every case: a man can only play one particular instrument of that type at a given time, but whenever he does, he can always be described as standing in the player-of relation to the whole species of instrument too. They are different descriptions of what is going on, but the crucial thing is that whenever one happens, the other one always happens as well, in the very same moment, and because of the very same physical act.
The two descriptions are (as semanticists say) intensionally different, but extensionally they collapse because of a sort of metaphysical overlap. It's akin to what philosophers call supervenience. Playing a particular violin and acting as a player of that species of instrument are different, but every instance of the latter supervenes on an instance of the former: if I were playing the violin at some particular moment, in order to stop me you would have to interfere with my playing of a particular physical violin. Playing the violin can't happen, in any given instant, without it being physically the case that playing some particular physical violin is going on in that instant.
That's what I told Ismael, anyway. Nobody has died and nominated me as metaphysics expert or semantics guru (comments are open below for metaphysics experts and semantics gurus), but I've told Ismael and you what I think is going on.
Falstaff said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:03 pm
"Playing the violin can't happen, in any given instant, without it being physically the case that playing some particular physical violin is going on in that instant."
You mean you've never played air violin?
Tim Silverman said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:08 pm
I'd put the same point slightly differently: "playing a violin" is conceived of as performing the action (playing) upon an object (a violin) whereas "playing the violin" is conceived of as performing a particular kind or subspecies of the action "playing"—where the subspecies is "that kind which is performed upon a violin". As you say, the instances of these actions are necessarily coextensive, making the meanings hard to distinguish.
Ben said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:11 pm
Good: "On stage, fifty people were playing the violin"
No good: "On stage, fifty people were playing a violin"
rikchik said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:11 pm
Could one "play the violin" using some other instrument, such as a viola, Laurie Anderson's bowed-tape-deck contraption, or some theoretical "Violin Hero" controller? Someone playing the guitar part in Rock Band might be playing the guitar without actually playing a guitar.
Ben said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:12 pm
Unless it was a really big violin.
sephia karta said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:14 pm
I don't know much about semantics, but your explanation seems to succeed in isolating what is at play here.
I've been trying to come up with a situation where [2] might be truer than [1]. Suppose that the 'violinist' was really playing on a sort of device that could emulate musical instruments, and that this was not the first time that the visitor had arrived while he was using this machine, and that every time this happened it would be a surprise for the visitor what instrument the man was playing. I think that in such a situation, albeit farfetched, [2] would be true but [1] not.
L. said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
If someone were playing "the violin" I would assume that they were playing it acceptably well, but for "a violin" it could be awful (but not necessarily)
UL said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:25 pm
How would the omission of a determiner affect this argument? Does it complicate supervenience?
[3] He was playing violin when the visitor arrived.
While I may be wrong, I envision two varieties of violin here: a physical violin and an imaginary one. If physical, I can incorporate your analysis, above; play violin while playing some particular physical violin. However if the violin is imaginary (i.e. a child pretending to play violin), then the opposite is true. I cannot play an imaginary violin while playing some particular physical violin. If this the case, does this mean that supervenience is avoided in the absence of a determiner?
Hope that I don't take the discussion too far off course.
L. said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:26 pm
Note also that a musician would never say "I play a violin". They would always say "I play the viloin". They would of course say "I play a stradivarius", and only in the case of very special instruments (and musicians) would they say "I play the Gould"
If you are looking for a new instrument you would go to a music shop and "play a violin", you would not "play the violin" (though that would be what you were doing in practice)
Note that although one refers to the great Highland bagpipe, one only ever plays "the pipes" when talking of the Scottish instrument. In other cases it is possible to say "he played a bagpipe" but it would be much more usual to use the plural for almost all bagpipes. What other instruments are plural in English? The drums is the only one that springs to mind at the moment.
Ben said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:29 pm
Another way to state my previous comment:
Playing the violin = making violin sounds (where each sound comes from a violin)
Playing a violin = using a violin (where each use makes a violin sound)
L. said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:29 pm
One Cello – 4 players
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxiQji0CGrA
Skullturf Q. Beavispants said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
My immediate reaction was that I thought I'd be more likely to say (1) if I had never known the person in question to be interested in violins, and seeing him with one was a surprise.
Josh said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
Another slight distinction I see is the following:
– Someone who plays the violin is a violin player
– Someone who plays a violin has fingers, a shoulder, and a chin.
You are right in that the first is a subset of the latter, but "playing the violin" indicates a certain level of competency above and beyond a random person picking up a violin and making noise with it.
Rubrick said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:35 pm
In response to Ben: It is, of course, perfectly normal for four musicians to play a cello.
Ben said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:37 pm
In light of the above distinction, I'd like to revise my definition:
Playing the violin = making violin
soundsmusic (where each sound comes from a violin)Playing a violin = using a violin (where each use makes a violin sound)
Richard Sabey said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:46 pm
@L. Not only that, but "I play the violin" indicates that the speaker habitually does that, so it's true so long as the speaker has that habit, regardless of whether he is actually playing a violin at the time. This refutes Prof. Pullum's statement .
To return to Ismael's question: there are (at least) 2 clues that his sentence [2] doesn't refer to the habit:
* the use of the progressive aspect ("was playing", not "played")
* the context makes it clear that the sentence refers only to a particular moment in time (when the visitor arrived) and thus to that single act of playing a violin that was happening then.
Thus if Prof. Pullum is right that Ismael's sentence [2] does not refer to playing either, then it is wrong. The only meaning I can extract from that sentence is that it refers to playing .
peter said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:51 pm
L. said (January 4, 2010 @ 6:26 pm)
"Note also that a musician would never say "I play a violin". They would always say "I play the viloin".
Expert violinists of my acquaintance (both classical and jazz musicians) almost never say, "I play the violin", but almost invariably, "I play the fiddle." But this difference in usage may be generational.
Ben said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:57 pm
@rikchik
Could one "play the violin" using some other instrument
This is a good point and I was trying to think of a good way to state it — within the context of a Rock Band is a very good way (in fact, I've often wished there was a violin part to Rock Band).
Someone playing the guitar part in Rock Band might be playing the guitar without actually playing a guitar
Anyway, I might actually state the inverse of this: "Someone playing the guitar part in Rock Band might be playing *a* guitar without actually playing *the* guitar." Not sure which way makes more sense.
Shlomo Argamon said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:13 pm
I think that Tim Silverman's comment is quite right, that by specifying the syntactic object in this way (as indicative of the species of violin as per the post), one is selecting a particular kind of "playing" action, and there is no specified object that is acted upon (whether an individual or a species). I think this is proven by considering whether the sentence could be followed by either of:
1. It was a Stradivarius.
2. It was very practiced.
To my ear, (1) goes with (1) only and (2) with (2) only, indicating that the second sentence describes a "semantically intransitive" action (what's the proper term for this?). (I will of course defer to the judgment of any professional semanticists…)
peter said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:16 pm
L. said (January 4, 2010 @ 6:26 pm)
"Note that although one refers to the great Highland bagpipe, one only ever plays "the pipes" when talking of the Scottish instrument. In other cases it is possible to say "he played a bagpipe" but it would be much more usual to use the plural for almost all bagpipes. What other instruments are plural in English? The drums is the only one that springs to mind at the moment."
The bells, the chimes, the claves, the maracas, the marimbas, the ondes martenot, the spoons.
Also, one plays percussion, not "the" or "a" percussion.
Forrest said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
It's interesting to see that so many comments agree that "playing a violin" means picking one up and trying to make it work, while "playing the violin" is something that can only be done by a person with some mastery over the instrument. I have the same sense myself, but it's pretty vague. So I'm glad to see I'm not alone on that front.
I would take the "species" approach to this question. I've tried to learn to play the violin, but wasn't very successful. If I'd managed to learn the instrument, though, I wouldn't need that particular violin to be able to play violin. That's sort of the point. They'll vary a bit in terms of how high the strings are above the neck, but for the most part, all violins are about the same size, shape, have the same tuning, etc. It would be a little funny to say "I know how to play a violin."
L mentioned the bag pipes, and asked "What other instruments are plural in English? The drums is the only one that springs to mind at the moment." I'd say strings would be appropriate, especially given the subject of this post.
rikchik asked
People with MIDI instruments like to pretend that this is exactly what they're doing. You can use a piano keyboard to sound more or less like a guitar, drum kit, or violin, while actually playing with your fingers on a keyboard.
dof said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:20 pm
I think the difference becomes clearer (albeit somewhat cruder) if you replace "violin" with "pink oboe."
rikchik said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:23 pm
Ben, I think it depends on which pair you think is more different – pressing buttons while flicking a strum bar and playing the guitar, or a plastic guitar-shaped controller and a guitar. I'm sure people say "I'll play the guitar" while picking instruments in Rock Band.
Sili said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:29 pm
I'd certainly have used either expression for a violist before I learned to identify a bratsch, so for an ignorant observer the exact nature of the instrument is not important for the meaning.
On the other hand, that if one were to snap the strings of a violin like a ukulele, one is playing a violin, not the violin. And yet several compositions call for pizzicato(?), so one would needs must also have to hold the violin as a ukulele inorder not to play the violin.
… and once again I illustrate the dangers of opening comments to other than gurus and metaphysicists.
William Young said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:35 pm
And what's interesting is if you apply it to non-musical situations.
1) Bob drives a bus. Carol knows how to fly a plane.
2) Bob drives the bus. Carol knows how to fly the plane.
The No.1 examples give the feeling of them being familiar with that type of vehicle, while the No.2 examples hint at it being a vehicle already in context (EG: The bus you and I take every day, the plane that's currently in a nosedive)
Marinus said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:40 pm
Something that's worth saying about supervenience: it might be an easy way to explain it by saying 'A supervenes on B is every change in B means there's a change in A', but that's not what supervenience is (it's an effect of supervenience). We can see that by looking at cases of supervenience where the items in question never change, like 'the qualities of the Fibonacci numbers supervene on those of the natural numbers'. But Prof Pullum's explanation is certainly plausible.
I can't help but feel that this wheels in more machinery than we need to explain what's going on, though. For one thing, I'd never say 'playing a violin' or 'playing the violin' in this situation, but instead just 'playing violin' (like 'cooking dinner', not 'cooking a/the dinner'). I'd describe what the fellow was doing as a token of a practice, rather than a particular activity. This is like the way playing chess as distinct to moving lumps of stuff around a checkerboard. This cuts out the Rock Band example, because playing guitar in the game Rock Band is nothing like playing the six-stringed instrument.
Participating in the practice supervenes on any token of the practice, of course. So when someone is playing violin he is also playing some particular violin, or playing any of the many violins in existence. Hell, many things supervene on many other things: that's why philosophers are interested in it, it seems like a significant relationship (effects supervene on causes, wholes supervene on their parts, and so on).
peter said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:43 pm
Forrest said (January 4, 2010 @ 7:17 pm):
"I would take the "species" approach to this question. I've tried to learn to play the violin, but wasn't very successful. If I'd managed to learn the instrument, though, I wouldn't need that particular violin to be able to play violin. That's sort of the point. They'll vary a bit in terms of how high the strings are above the neck, but for the most part, all violins are about the same size, shape, have the same tuning, etc."
Despite this uniformity in (standard-size) acoustic violins, expert violinists can tell you of the specific performance differences and idiosyncracies of individual instruments, which make them more or less suited to particular players and playing styles.
But such uniformity is not found in electronic violins. These vary from manufacturer to another, and even instruments by the one manufacturer may have different numbers, default tunings, and arrangements of strings. The player of an electronic violin, even a virtuoso, has to first learn to play that particular instrument that he or she has hold of, just as organists do.
Julie said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:43 pm
In a piece of fiction, if I used the phrase "playing a violin" I would be implying that this particular violin will be relevant to my story. (He was playing a violin when the visitor arrived. The visitor paused to admire the beautiful instrument. "Is it an antique?" he asked at length.)
If I were to write "playing the violin" without any previous reference to a particular violin, I would be implying that the musician (or his music) is relevant to my story. ( He was playing the violin when the visitor arrived. The visitor listened in admiration before interrupting. "Do you play with the orchestra?")
Nathan Myers said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:44 pm
So, did Nero play a violin while Rome burned, or the violin?
You can certainly play the world's smallest violin without playing any actual violin, or even making violin-playing motions.
Sol said,
January 4, 2010 @ 7:45 pm
Now, what if I were to say the slightly awkward but I believe grammatical "He was playing on the violin"? (Actually, I think it sounds better to say "on the guitar" than "on the violin" for some reason, but that might just be my imagination.
It seems to me that the meaning of (3) "He was playing on the violin" is actually closer to (1) "He was playing a violin" than (2) "He was playing the violin," despite the common article, since (3) seems to imply something more immediate and tangible than (2).
Eerie, eh?
Or maybe I'm way off base?
Nicholas Waller said,
January 4, 2010 @ 8:21 pm
It's all about Plato. "The" violin is the form or the idea of the violin and is thus on some elevated plane of mathematico-musical purity; "a" violin is a random specific physical and impure example of the instrument which might have cracked varnish and be out of tune.
Hellestal said,
January 4, 2010 @ 8:26 pm
This makes me think that sentence [2] would also apply to virtual reality playing. If the visitor walks in and sees this musician hooked up to all sorts of gizmos, the musician could still be playing "the violin", even if he was not playing "a violin", as in, not playing a tangible four-stringed object with f holes.
Marinus said,
January 4, 2010 @ 8:28 pm
You just need a type-token relationship to get what you're aiming at, no reason to start wheeling in Platonic idealism.
Sniffnoy said,
January 4, 2010 @ 8:57 pm
To expand on Julie's comment, because the first sentence introduces an actual violin, it allows that violin to be referred back to; to use her example, "He was playing a violin when the visitor arrived. The visitor paused to admire it." works but "He was playing the violin when the visitor arrived. The visitor paused to admire it." unless we have the case that was explicitly excluded at the beginning of the post.
Diane said,
January 4, 2010 @ 9:03 pm
@Marinus
"For one thing, I'd never say 'playing a violin' or 'playing the violin' in this situation, but instead just 'playing violin'…"
I don't think I have ever heard anyone say "playing violin" before this discussion. I have always heard it as either "a violin" or "the violin". (FWIW, I'm a native English speaker from California.)
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 4, 2010 @ 9:17 pm
Ben said:
Good: "On stage, fifty people were playing the violin"
No good: "On stage, fifty people were playing a violin"
What about
"On stage, fifty people were playing violins."
???
empty said,
January 4, 2010 @ 9:17 pm
Johnny B. Goode "could play the guitar just like ringing a bell".
unekdoud said,
January 4, 2010 @ 9:57 pm
Or perhaps we can just treat "playing the violin" as an idiomatic expression, and "playing a violin" as a verb followed by a noun, and point out that supervenience happens to exist for this case.
One observation that distinguishes the two sentences given is that sentence (2) does not draw attention to the physical violin, so we can say (intelligibly) "he was playing a violin, which was too large for him, when the visitor arrived" but the other version of the sentence would sound weirder.
(Do all languages show this phenomenon, or does it depend on the use of an article before the noun?)
John Laviolette said,
January 4, 2010 @ 10:21 pm
@unekdoud: that's how I interpet the expressions. And, like Julie, I think of the article in each sentence as changing the focus.
"Play(ing) the violin" is a unit that refers to a kind of musical act. The focus is on the act itself, or the person performing the act.
"Play(ing) a violin" is a verb followed by a noun phrase. The focus is on the instrument. Moreover, although "a violin" is technically the direct object, I see it conceptually as the object of a prepositional phrase. Sentence (1) is identical in my mind to "He was playing music on a violin when the visitor arrived."
Ignoto Fiorentino said,
January 4, 2010 @ 10:34 pm
I don't think it has anything to do either with competence or habit. Instead, I think that it's got something to do with the way in which "playing the violin" operates as an idiomatic phrase, with a sense that is separate from a transitive verb operating on an object. Compare
[1] Bob took a bus to work today.
[2] Bob took the bus to work today.
Or better yet, compare:
[3] Bob wasn't just whistling Dixie.
[4] Bob wasn't just whistling "Dixie"
monkeytypist said,
January 4, 2010 @ 10:36 pm
I think it's largely a difference in focus. To me, "playing the violin" focuses on what is the output – ie. violin music. My first response (admittedly, I'm a violin player, so maybe my instincts here aren't natural) to "playing the violin" is to ask "what was he playing?" (ie. what music?). But in response to "playing a violin" I would be more likely to ask something like "whose violin?" or "what type of violin?".
J.W. Brewer said,
January 4, 2010 @ 10:42 pm
There seems to be a substantial division of internet opinion on whether Johnny B. Goode could "play the guitar" or "play a guitar." I took the original Chuck Berry recording (as reissued on the '88 "Chess Box" anthology) down off the shelf for a listen and it sure sounds to me like "a guitar" (setting up parallelism with 'ringing a bell"?). But while I would treat that recording as the canonical text, I certainly wouldn't predict that 100% of the zillions of cover versions out there would prove consistent on that issue if surveyed. Maybe omitting the article is less usual with violin, but "play guitar," with neither a nor the, sounds perfectly idiomatic to me. Ziggy Stardust, for example, "took it all too far / But boy could he play guitar." Although isn't the idiom "play second fiddle," not a or the second fiddle?
Jeffrey Kallberg said,
January 4, 2010 @ 11:15 pm
@Nathan Myers:
"So, did Nero play a violin while Rome burned, or the violin? "
Neither, unless this Nero lived after the late Renaissance.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/journals/CJ/42/4/Nero_Fiddled*.html
Alexandra said,
January 4, 2010 @ 11:33 pm
@ L.: Did you notice the description in that YouTube video? "four musicians playing in the same cello. amazing!"
@ monkeytypist: "I think it's largely a difference in focus." Exactly! When I read (1), I get a strong visual image. When I read (2), the auditory impression is much stronger. I also agree with many other commenters that the playing is more likely to be done badly in (1) than (2).
Graeme said,
January 4, 2010 @ 11:48 pm
Geoff's explanation rings true. To me the definite article draws attention to the term 'violin' – its 'violinity' matters. The indefinite article deaccentuates the activity. As if the protagonist could have been doing something else (musical?) or was playing casually.
empty said,
January 5, 2010 @ 12:06 am
it sure sounds to me like "a guitar"
Me too. I stand corrected. Too many times listening to the Grateful Dead singing it the other way in my youth.
John Cowan said,
January 5, 2010 @ 12:41 am
Nero definitely didn't play the violin. He did enjoy singing and accompanying himself on the lyre, and may have done so during the Great Fire of Rome: there's no hard evidence, only rumor.
phosphorious said,
January 5, 2010 @ 12:42 am
This is a case of referential inscrutability, I suppose. Whenever you point at a person who is playing a violin, you are also pointing at a person who is playing the violin.
The standard example in philosophy of langage is the difference between a rabbit and an undettached rabbit part; whenever you point at one, you necessarily point at the other.
The example is Quine's, and if I remember correctly, he used it to argue that intensional semantics was a dubious enterprise.
Jair said,
January 5, 2010 @ 1:28 am
To me, the first sentence has an element of surprise to it. It makes me think the visitor did not know the other man even had a violin. Compare the two questions: "You're playing the violin? Where'd you learn that?" vs. "You're playing a violin? Where'd you get that?" The first puts the emphasis on the verb, the second on the noun.
Philip Spaelti said,
January 5, 2010 @ 2:25 am
From The Beatles "Live at BBC" the Beatles introduction goes like this:
Ringo: "I'm Ringo and I play the drums."
Paul: "I'm Paul and I play the bass."
George "I'm George and I play a guitar."
John: "I'm John and I too play a guitar. Sometimes I play the fool."
I was always struck by George using "a". I guess since the Beatles do have two guitars it is appropriate, though it almost spoils John's following joke.
WindowlessMonad said,
January 5, 2010 @ 3:39 am
It was a great concert but the number of violinists became unmanageable.
It was a great concert but a number of violinists became unmanageable.
L. said,
January 5, 2010 @ 5:19 am
Thanks @peter for the list – interesting that they are all percussion instruments apart from the ondes martenot (which was one I that came to me after the post). I think that "strings" is a class rather than a specific instrument name so doesn't count. (Going further off at a tangent on plurals, band sections : strings, woodwinds but percussion and brass)
On the original topic I am now more than ever convinced it is something to do with musicality.
The plural instruments do make for interesting variants though :
"I play the drums" is different from "I play a drum" : the latter seems to me to be asking for me to say "What kind of drum?" Of course were you to be a drummer in a Pipe Band (and presumably other marching bands) then it is a different since you tend only to play one drum at a time.
You can say "I play the/a drum" but "I play the/a spoon" is weird.
Roger Lustig said,
January 5, 2010 @ 5:29 am
"He was playing on a violin." — Unusual but OK (I think), and implies that he was *not* particularly good at it.
@Peter: note that those percussion instruments come in actual sets. One can play the cymbals, or one suspended one. "Marimbas" is correct among musicians, but lots of people say "Marimba." Odder: "vibraphone" (s.) and "vibes" (pl.). Also odd: "timpani", the singular of which is "kettledrum" (or perhaps "timp").
Musicians who play various wind instruments in pit orchestras are said to play "reeds," even though they're usually playing just one. (Or none–sax players tend to double on flute, so flute's often in one or more reed books.) So I guess we have our non-pipes, non-percussion plural.
(Forgive me, but I'm sitting here and having my favorite breakfast–coffee, eggs, Language Log–in the apartment of a timpanist who also plays vibes.)
Peter Taylor said,
January 5, 2010 @ 5:38 am
He plays violin sounds faintly marked to me, but *He was playing violin sounds more strongly marked. Curiously He plays violin in the Symphony Orchestra doesn't.
Sol's He was playing on the violin made me think of a small child and a large foam instrument rather than musical activity. In a narrative context which hadn't previously introduced such a toy, I'm not sure what I'd think.
peter said,
January 5, 2010 @ 6:41 am
"I'm George and I play a guitar."
And then, for the analytically-adventurous, there's always:
"He plays a mean guitar."
L. said,
January 5, 2010 @ 7:20 am
"Ziggy played guitar"
"I played guitar on that recording" which has to me a slight difference to "I played the guitar on that recording" and is even more different to "I played a guitar on that recording"
The "the" usage is emphasising the guitar aspect of the playing whereas the one with no article seems to me to be putting the emphasis on participation, as, interestingly, does the latter (which I visualise as a loads of people picking up instruments and thrashing away)
SLA said,
January 5, 2010 @ 9:56 am
Not quite relevant to the topic. But for a learner of English especially whose mother tongue is not an Indo-European, mastering the use of determiners and prepositions in English is comparable to mastering case, number and gender agreement in inflectional languages. They are the fundamentals but it is hard to perfectly master them.
Marinus said,
January 5, 2010 @ 10:30 am
Well, since I attest saying 'play violin/guitar/piano/etc.', the same way I'd say 'play football/chess/the fool', I might as well say where I'm from. I'm a South African (from the Anglophone east coast) who spoke Afrikaans at home and English damn-near everywhere else. I've stayed in New Zealand for four years, where I ever felt any pressure to say 'play the guitar/etc.'. Maybe I'm reporting my own internalised rules wrong, or am not representative of my speech communities, but somehow I doubt both.
Ben said,
January 5, 2010 @ 12:04 pm
@Jarek Weckwerth
What about "On stage, fifty people were playing violins."
Yeah, I realized right after I posted it that my example was not helpful. All that example did was to point out that the "the" in sentence [2] was not referring to a specific identifiable violin. And Pullum already discounted that possibility at the beginning of the article.
That's why I posted definitions a little later to show my actual intuitions about the difference between the two sentences.
George said,
January 5, 2010 @ 12:19 pm
L wrote:
"I played guitar on that recording" which has to me a slight difference to "I played the guitar on that recording" and is even more different to "I played a guitar on that recording"
The "the" usage is emphasising the guitar aspect of the playing whereas the one with no article seems to me to be putting the emphasis on participation, as, interestingly, does the latter (which I visualise as a loads of people picking up instruments and thrashing away)
I don't get the same feeling at all. And it seems to me that this very much a question of feeling and that it is probably very difficult to generalise. For me, the difference between the first example (with no article) and the second (with 'the') has to do with how many guitarists can be heard on the recording. In the first example, it's a bit ambiguous but there could be more than one; in the second, I sense that the speaker is probably the only one. But for the third example (with 'a'), I'd go along with L. It sounds deliberately odd, perhaps self-deprecating.
Russell said,
January 5, 2010 @ 1:34 pm
I'm not sure if musical instruments are the more or less common case, but in the frame "do you X?" not all expressions seem equally acceptable (I'll withhold my judgments).
Do you (know how to) use the fountain pen?
Do you (know how to) fly the Boeing 747?
Do you (know how to) read the magazine?
I wonder also if with musical instruments, certain activities can be understood as potentially involving the instrument-type while others are less likely to:
He was tuning a/*the violin when… ["the" must be a contextually-given instance]
He was admiring a/*the violin when… [ditto]
He was practicing on a/??the violin when… ["the" is most likely a contextually-given instance; compare just "practice the violin" which is like "play the violin" (but *practice a violin)]
Maybe certain canonical or typical activities like playing or practicing with an instrument (i.e., doing what we commonly understand the "purpose" of those things to be) encourages the sort of abstraction GKP noticed, while other activities, even those that in some objective sense meet the semantic criteria, do not.
Mark F said,
January 5, 2010 @ 7:19 pm
There are at least two questions here. One is why people can say "she was playing the violin" when they aren't talking about a particular violin that came up earlier in the discourse. Why is it even grammatical? I think the "abstract object" perspective that Geoff describes is a good explanation of how you can see that as being consistent with a more general rule for when you use "the". Of course grammar often doesn't conform to general principles, but sometimes it really does even when it doesn't at first look like it, and this may be one of those cases.
Another question is what the pragmatic difference is between the two utterances, and I think Mokeytypist, Julie, and unekdoud are right to say that "playing a violin" causes you to focus on the particular violin as an object. I guess Jair was saying the same thing when he said that using "the" focuses on the verb rather than the noun.
And I think the talk about supervenience sort of hides it, but the second does follow from the first. Unekdoud and at least one or two others want to say that "playing the violin" is just an idiom that can't be broken down, but the "abstract object" point of view gives just the desired interpretation, because it takes the focus away from any single concrete violin. And it doesn't make sense to treat it as an unanalyzable idiom, because of the way we talk on the phone, go to the hospital (if we're Americans), take out the trash, and so on. It's certainly different from "whistling Dixie", which is a fixed phrase.
mbd said,
January 5, 2010 @ 9:04 pm
I realized that the difference becomes clearer when another verb is used instead of to play–for example, to study.
He studies a violin – He is closely examining an instrument.
He studies the violin – He is closely examining an instrument previously mentioned (He saw a violin on the table. He studied the violin), or he is learning to play the instrument.
Philip Spaelti said,
January 5, 2010 @ 9:18 pm
The problem is that logic can only take you so far here. Clearly there is also just a language specific convention at play here. So in English "the" is used with instruments, but not say with sports, but in French the article is used in both cases:
I'll joue le violon.
I'll joue le tennis.
But in Alemannic (i.e. Swiss-German) the article is used in neither case.
Er spillt Giige. / *Er spillt d Giige.
Er spillt Tennis. / * Er spillt ds Tennis.
peter said,
January 6, 2010 @ 4:30 am
Philip: There are certainly conventions regarding the use of articles particular to specific language (sub-) communities at work here. In England, one will often hear spoken sentences like, "The shop is on the Finchley Road", whereas in Australia it would almost always be, "The shop is on Finchley Road".
One of the first signs a car-rental driver sees, leaving Heathrow airport, shows directions to "The North", something which always amuses antipodean friends.
Julie said,
January 6, 2010 @ 7:23 am
I'm having trouble coming up with other examples (after Mark F): to dance the tango, run the marathon, to ride the bus, listen to the radio, or take the highway (or the "scenic route") without referring to any specific object.
…. It seems to be a short list. Lacking that prior reference, one rides a bicycle, takes a taxi, takes a shortcut, or watches TV.
@Peter, are you sure that the difference is not between "the road leading to Finchley" and "the road named Finchley Road?" I'm in California, but I would make that distinction. And that would make the second case a proper noun, with no "the."
L. said,
January 6, 2010 @ 7:30 am
@peter, I am not at all sure about your statement about using "the" with roads in the UK. It is not a common usage and I would say is quite restricted in context. For example you would never say "the shop is on the Mornington Crescent". You can say "on the High Street" certainly and indeed I think you always would, certainly in Edinburgh you would. *BUT* if there is a "Low Street" and a "Wide Street" you probably wouldn't say "the High Street" – the point about "the High Street" is that it is an important street high == main in this case.
WRT "the Finchley Road" this has (to me anyway) a direct implication that it is a road that leads to Finchley or is the main street in Finchley. Other examples : The Great North Road (which actually has many different names for parts of it), the Walker Road which leads to and runs through Walker. (of course it is always "the M1" or "the Chorley Bypass")
"The North" is correct as it is not intended to be directional but descriptive of a place. Scotland is not the North. When you reach the North you see signs for Scotland.
Scriptor Ignotior said,
January 6, 2010 @ 8:11 am
GKP wrote:
Akin? More than that, of course, for occurrent ("real-time") violin-playing. But what work is achieved by pointing out this supervenience? The concept is most useful when A supervenes on B, but B does not supervene on A. So for example, conscious states supervene on brain states, but not vice versa: any change in conscious states requires a change in brain states, but the reverse doesn't hold. Conscious states are, as they say, multiply realizable in brain states. A useful result. Now, surely playing-the-violin states do supervene on playing-a-violin states – but the reverse also holds. In GKP's terms, "if I were playing a particular physical violin at some particular moment, in order to stop me you would have to interfere [in effect, at least] with my playing the violin [occurrently; right here and now]."
Where does that get us? Not very far, perhaps. But one way to get a classic one-way supervenience would be to replace the occurrent sense of "playing the violin" with a non-occurrent, habitual or "tendency" sense, equivalent to "being a violinist", understood a certain way – a way according to which a quadriplegic could not, or could no longer, be a violinist. Presumably being a violinist supervenes on particular episodes of playing a violin, but the reverse does not hold. Not all occurrences or non-occurrences of particular episodes of my playing a violin depend on changes in my being a violinist; but changes in my being a violinist (understood as set out above) certainly depend on (are supervenient on) the occurrence or non-occurrence of episodes of my playing a violin.
It may be that some of the uncertainties evident above in the thread are due to an insidious slippage between these two senses of playing the violin, which ought to be kept distinct: the occurrent and the habitual.
Marinus wrote:
Sorry, no. That account of supervenience is a non-starter; it's the wrong way round. To adapt your terms, it has to be: "A supervenes on B if and only if for every change in A there must be some change in B." See my explanation above. Nor can we say that any such formulation (yours, or my revision of it) is "an effect of supervenience". Your formulation yields nothing like that; and my formulation exhibits no "effect of supervenience" (whatever that could mean!), but rather what constitutes a case of supervenience.
J. W. Brewer said,
January 6, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
Re BrE use of "the" in street-sign etc. contexts where AmE (and I take it AusE) wouldn't: there's a Clash song with the lovely lines "Johnny Too Bad meets Johnny B. Goode / In the Charing Cross Road." And it was only when driving around London sometime in the '90's and seeing a sign bearing the same words that I realized where the obscure '70's prog band Hatfield and the North took their name from.
For U.S. roads, I think the "the" is obligatory for e.g. the Pennsylvania Turnpike or New Jersey Turnpike. (But where I grew up just south of Philadelphia the roads named e.g. Baltimore Pike, Concord Pike, and Philadelphia Pike could not take an article.) Likewise for most if not all named parkways/highways in the greater N.Y.C. area (the Deegan, the Garden State, the Hutch, the Merritt, the Taconic etc.). The "the" seems optional with "Boston Post Road" but near-mandatory if you clip it to "the Post Road." On the East Coast I've never heard it used with a number (you say, 95 or I-95, not "the 95"), but in the Los Angeles area expressions like "the 405" seem common if not obligatory.
peter said,
January 6, 2010 @ 3:25 pm
L. (January 6, 2010 @ 7:30 am): I guess our experiences of spoken English in England differ.
In any case, great writers allow themselves to make exceptions – or has usage changed? Here is Somerset Maugham in "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (published as novel in 1928, but in story form before that, page references to the PAN Books edition, 1952):
page 78: " . . . Ashenden was pleased to admit that the pursuit of literature had its compensations. He sighed when eager young students of the drama sought to discuss its technique with him, . . ."
To compensate, later we read:
page 93 (talking of a prisoner being escorted by two French guards): "She was in charge of two detectives who had taken her over from English police at Boulogne."
In both these cases, current usage seems to be the opposite of what Maugham has written ("drama" and "the charge").
Marinus said,
January 6, 2010 @ 7:53 pm
@ Scriptor: you're right of course, that was a silly typo (as was 'is' for 'if'). Also, with 'an effect of supervenience' I meant: (A supervenes on B) entails (a change in A entails a change in B). But there doesn't have to be any actual changes for supervenience to hold, as I hoped to show with my 'Fibonacci numbers supervene on the natural numbers.
Julie said,
January 6, 2010 @ 8:15 pm
In the small California town where I grew up, a nearby two-lane highway is generally known as "the Willits road." At the other end of that road, some 35 miles away, you arrive at Willits, where that same road is called "the Fort Bragg road." Maps identify it only as CA 20. People elsewhere call it "Highway 20." No "the."
So far as I know, the Los Angeles use of "the 405" is limited to Southern California; I have never heard it except from natives of that region.
Named highways and freeways are often called "the" in Northern California, though. "The Nimitz Freeway," for example.
Barney said,
January 6, 2010 @ 8:25 pm
Ok, some related examples
She teaches the violin
She teaches a violin * (ungrammatical, at least until violins become able to learn)
I am learning the flute
I am learning a flute *
And by way of analogy:
She teaches tennis
She teaches a tennis *
This may already have been suggested, but it seems that "the violin", is an activity, which can be played, taught, practiced etc. A violin, of course, is a very special type of wooden box with strings on. The difference between the sentences then is that one mentions the activity, and the wooden box is implied, and the other mentions the wooden box, and the activity is implied.
Play seems interesting too. The transitive usually seems to take a game or role as an object, and can take any form of type of music, so its perhaps a short leap from that to taking any musical instrument. You don't make that leap with actual games though: you can play football, but you can't play a football.
Ben said,
January 7, 2010 @ 12:46 am
@Barney: It's true that you can play football but can't play a football. But on the other hand you can both play chess and you can play the queen or a pawn.
I think this is because "playing the queen" can be thought of as an action within the context of the game, but "playing a football" does not refer to anything semantically coherent.
And this isn't just for chess–for most board games it generally does make sense refer to playing of the component pieces. So for some "game instruments" the analogy holds, but it's not universal like for musical instruments.
Scriptor Ignotior said,
January 7, 2010 @ 7:27 am
Marinus:
A typo? Fair enough. But now you write:
Hm. First, of course there needn't be any actual change in A or B for some supervenience relation to hold between A and B. Supervenience is understood as about possible changes, and how possible differences in A and B fit together. Second, at least for that reason it is uninformative to speak of the Fibonacci numbers supervening on the natural numbers – or on anything else, for that matter. No changes are possible in the Fibonacci numbers, so nothing about them could interestingly supervene on anything, and nothing on them. There is only trivial supervenience in such domains. But why bother even to mention such relations? We can as informatively say that the nature of the Fibonacci numbers supervenes on the nature of the primes between 100 and 1000.
For discussion of just such trivial or nugatory supervenience, see the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on supervenience, which addresses the "fact that the necessary and the impossible supervene on anything and everything" (link).
Tricolon said,
January 7, 2010 @ 9:44 am
I find that (1) implies that it was a coincidental encounter, that he just happened to be playing a violin when the visitor arrived. (2) implies he was practicing and the the visitor interrupted or distracted him.
Erik Piper said,
January 7, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
@Nathan Myers:
"You can certainly play the world's smallest violin without playing any actual violin, or even making violin-playing motions."
Though the motions aren't necessary, I find they make my world's-smallest-violin-playing more effective in its aim of infuriating my wife. (…And thus avoid them except in exceptional cases.)
Ken Brown said,
January 7, 2010 @ 2:14 pm
L. said: "one only ever plays "the pipes" when talking of the Scottish instrument. In other cases it is possible to say "he played a bagpipe" but it would be much more usual to use the plural for almost all bagpipes. What other instruments are plural in English? The drums is the only one that springs to mind at the moment."
And Northumbrian and Irish pipes as well. But a set of bagpipes really is plural – there is one bag but more than one pipe.
You can play "a drum" if you only have one.
But although you can play "the bagpipe" if you are a person who habitually plays bagpipes, while you are doing it you are not "playing *a* bagpipe" but "a set of pipes."
As far as I know players and makers do actually use the word "set" to describe their instruments. Google reckons that the phrase "set of bagpipes" has over a million hits.
L. said,
January 7, 2010 @ 3:35 pm
Players and makers and players do refer to sets of pipes though it would be unusual to say that you played a set of pipes unless it was qualified in some way : he played a set of Burleigh pipes (where Burleigh is the maker's name) or he plays a set of pipes in lignum vitae (material used to make them)
Most pipers (at least all the ones I know) would say that they play "the pipes" or "the uillean/northumbrian/etc. pipes" rather than anything else.
Not all pipes are plural : the musette for example appears to be singular. I don't know about zampogna (Italian) – is that a plural?
You can play a pipe but that would be a different instrument qv pipe and tabor.
(drums of course get grouped as a singular drum kit)
Natalie Klein said,
January 7, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
My colleagues and I have been keeping lists of these weak definites and have run a few experiments…
listen to the radio
go to the beach
go to the doctor
take the stairs
sent to the slammer
in the hospital
etc, etc.
They seem to evoke canonical event types more than refer to unique entities. They also may be in complementary distribution with bare singulars. For example, American English has "go to the hospital" with a weak interpretation, and British English has "in hospital" as a bare singular.
Glad to see everyone's thoughts and interest in the topic!
Marinus said,
January 7, 2010 @ 8:15 pm
@ Scriptor
We're talking past each other a bit. I just wanted to give an example of supervenience without reference to changes, I didn't claim anything about how interesting an example it is, it merely needed to be an example. In any case, there are situations where we might want to have supervenience be neutral on whether there are any actual changes. For instance, if determinism was true and every event were entirely determined by those preceding it, there wouldn't be any possibility that a certain neurological sequence could go any differently, so if a mental phenomenon were to supervene on that sequence, it couldn't go any differently either. But if we're clear that you can have supervenience without reference to changes, then we're clear the supervience between mental and physical isn't hostage to determinism. (We could talk about counterfactual ways of evaluating supervenience in terms of change, but that would be going even further off the topic than we already have.) The conditions under which supervenience holds is something it's worthwhile to be clear about.
If you want to get even more minimal in how you describe supervenience (as I do) it's also possible to do so without any reference to possibility: A supervenes on B if and only if for all x and all y, if x and y are B-indiscernible, they are also A-indiscernible. Doing so can be worthwile when comparing the relationship between the extensions of words or other descriptive terms (incidentally, the type of work I do from time to time in the language-related stretches of meta-ethics).
Scriptor Ignotior said,
January 8, 2010 @ 5:12 am
Marinus:
Interesting. You write:
The modal strands here can get tangled very easily. What species of modality is involved in "if determinism was true", for a start? (I'm not even sure whether you want that was cashed out as a were, matching what follows, or an is.) Then we'd have to work out how to individuate "neurological sequences", yes? If such a sequence consists essentially of its components in a certain order, then of course it could not go differently, even before we wheel in determinism. Next, under determinism the states in a sequence are only "conditionally" necessary: necessitated (in some way) by earlier states, as you suggest. That conditionality has to be borne carefully in mind. Under determinism, divergent states (and surely overall sequences of states) might retain possibility, of some flavour and strength.
A comment on your new formulation:
I am not sure that you have banished modality altogether. If there is a restriction to x and y as actual, then supervenience may certainly not hold between their A properties and their B properties, even given the indiscernibility you speak of. Appeal to merely possible states of x and y (or merely possible instances of x and y) would normally be taken as de rigueur, to establish (or, non-epistemically, to underwrite) supervenience.
But enough loose extempore chat. This is not the thread to go into such detail, though we might have at least usefully demonstrated that supervenience theses are more rocket science than child's play. Good luck with the work on supervenience applied in metaethics (its alleged breeding ground, though I find early invocation of it in late 19th-century speculations in biology and psychology).
Peter Taylor said,
January 8, 2010 @ 6:15 am
@L, in Spanish pipes are singular (la gaita).
@Julie, dances (you mention "the tango") are interesting in this regard. As a dancer my intuitions may not be typical, but in general I would say "X dances the Y well" for modern ballroom dances (the waltz, the quickstep, the tango, etc) but "X dances Z well" for Latin dances (salsa, rumba, Argentine tango, etc). The indefinite article can be used for specific instances – so "I missed most of the ball, but I danced a tango with A and a rumba with B".
Julie A said,
January 9, 2010 @ 4:06 am
My first hunch was that in [1], the point of view is moreso that of the visitor; the awareness on the visitor's part that the other person is playing a violin. In [2], the point of view seems moreso that of the violin player.
L. said,
January 9, 2010 @ 6:17 am
Hmmmm, dances. I would definitely dance the Circassian Circle, but I might also verb them : He salsas well. It takes two to tango. He waltzed her round the floor.
What about verbing instruments : pipers pipe, drummers drum, but I can't think of any others at the moment (banjo as a verb is something quite different).
nbm said,
January 10, 2010 @ 8:40 am
Violinists can't violin, but they do fiddle.
Terry said,
January 11, 2010 @ 10:24 pm
Ben said,
January 4, 2010 @ 6:11 pm
Good: "On stage, fifty people were playing the violin"
No good: "On stage, fifty people were playing a violin"
===========
Good: "On stage, fifty people were playing the violin"
Still good: "On stage, fifty people were playing a violin, passing it one to the other without missing a note."