"He spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to do so"
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Dan Lamothe, "U.S. Navy to China: We’ll sail our ships near your man-made islands whenever we want", WaPo 10/8/2015 [emphasis added]:
U.S. officials could soon send a Navy ship steaming by a chain of man-made islands that China has built in the South China Sea, Pentagon officials said, potentially exacerbating tensions in an area in which Beijing is expanding its presence.
China set up a territorial limit around the islands, effectively claiming international waters as their own. Washington does not recognize those claims, prompting the Navy to develop plans to send at least one ship within 12 nautical miles of the islands, a defense official said.
The Navy sending ships through the disputed areas would require approval from the White House, and underscore that the United States will not let China limit freedom of navigation at sea, the official added. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so.
Tim Macdonald writes: "I'm not sure exactly what kind of linguistic glitch this is, but I'm sure the Language Log team can identify it."
I agree that there's a glitch, and I can identify its nature. The anaphoric expression do so normally refers to a verb phrase, and in this case the obvious antecedent would be "[spoke] on condition of anonymity", yielding the nonsensical (or at least unintended) reading "He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on condition of anonymity".
The relevant literature on this subject goes paper to a classic paper by Jorge Hankamer and Ivan Sag, "Deep and Surface Anaphora". They start from observations like this: If I see someone trying to tear a phone book (remember those?) in half, I can comment "I don't think he can do that", but not (in the absence of prior mention of the enterprise) "I don't think he can do so". This was part of their evidence for a distinction between "deep anaphora" like that, which can be used to refer to aspects of the non-linguistic context, and "surface anaphora" like do so, which can only refer to explicit pieces of previous linguistic material.
This then led to some interesting arguments about verb-phrase constituency, starting with George Lakoff and John Ross, "Why you can't do so into the kitchen sink", in James McCawley, Ed., Syntax and Semantics 7: Notes from the linguistic underground, 1976. [Amazingly, no scans of the articles from this out-of-print classic appear to be available on the internets…] L&R use examples like those below to argue for a difference between verb-phrase complements (which must be included in do so anaphora) and verb-phrase adjuncts (which may be omitted):
*John took the midterm exam, and I did so the final.
*John gave a book to Pete, and I did so to Mary.
*John loaded a sack onto the truck, and I did so onto the wagon.
John flies planes carefully, but I do so with reckless abandon.
John worked on the problem for eight hours, but I did so for only two hours.
John takes a bath once a year, but Harry does so twice a month.
A more recent contribution to the debate can be found in Peter Culicover and Ray Jackendoff's 2005 book Simpler Syntax, which proposes a different solution, based on the idea that do so can refer to the antecedent verb phrase minus a focused constituent, for which a substitute is provided in the do so clause. For example,
Robin slept for twelve hours in the bunkbed, and Leslie did so for eight hours. [do so = sleep in the bunkbed]
A further addition, which presents a clear summary of the history, is Michael Houser's 2010 Berkeley PhD dissertation, The Syntax and Semantics of Do So Anaphora; or more briefly, his paper "On the anaphoric status of do so":
This article examines the anaphoric status of do so anaphora, reclassifying it as deep anaphora in Hankamer and Sag’s (1976) dichotomy of deep versus surface anaphora. Originally considered surface anaphora, do so has been shown to exhibit mixed behavior when the full range of empirical facts are considered. I look at data from a wide variety of diagnostics and show that do so’s behavior as surface anaphora falls out from independent properties of the anaphor. A consequence of this analysis as deep anaphora is that do so should no longer be used as evidence for the internal structure of the verb phrase.
From the L&R 1976 forward, everyone has agreed that it's fine to say or write things like
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so for attribution.
where do so refers only to the verb "speak", and the adjuncts "on condition of anonymity" and "for attribution" are contrasted.
The question is, can the contrastive adjunct be omitted, as in what Mr. Lamothe wrote?
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so.
My own judgment in this case agrees with Tim's: it's weird to use do so with an unexpressed, implicit contrastive adjunct.
It's important to note that linguists see the answers to such questions as evidence constraining their analysis, not as conclusions to be drawn from their analysis. But I speculate that Mr. Lamothe started with a different sentence in mind, e.g. "He did not speak for attribution because he was not authorized to do so", where do so refers (successfully) to the whole verb phrase "speak for attribution". The (incoherent?) sentence as printed then resulted from replacing "He did not speak for attribution" with "He spoke on condition of anonymity".
Ralph Hickok said,
October 11, 2015 @ 8:08 am
In Mark Twain's story about the man who got caught up in the machinery at the carpet factory, the widow has this written on his monument: "To the loving memory of thirty-nine yards best three-ply carpeting containing the mortal remainders of Millington G. Wheeler. Go thou and do likewise."
Terrence Lockyer said,
October 11, 2015 @ 10:18 am
I suspect what happened here is an originally longer sentence truncated in editing. The "He spoke on condition of anonymity because [he was not authorized]" formula is quite standard; usually followed by either a broad explanation (a quick Google reveals examples such as "to speak publicly", "to discuss the case with the news media", "to brief media on the issue", "to speak to journalists", "to speak to the press", and even "to give his name to the media") or a more specific (e. g., "because his complaint contains private medical information").
This being so, one can reconstruct a possible original sentence as either "He spoke to the press / Washington Post on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so", or more likely (given the usual formula) "He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media".
Q. Pheevr said,
October 11, 2015 @ 10:26 am
I'm not sure there is an implicit contrasting adjunct in "He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so"; I read it as meaning '…because he was not authorized to speak.' It's awkward because it's ambiguous how much material is replaced by 'do so' ('speak' vs. 'speak on condition of anonymity'), but I find it gets better if I imagine it said with contrastive stress on authorized.
Jonathon Owen said,
October 11, 2015 @ 12:51 pm
I agree with Q. Pheevr. "He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so for attribution" still seems off to me because it implies that he was authorized to speak anonymously, when it was probably the case that he was not authorized to speak at all.
Gregory Kusnick said,
October 11, 2015 @ 1:19 pm
Doesn't it go without saying that if someone is speaking anonymously, it's because they're not authorized to speak for attribution? So why not omit the "because" clause altogether?
Gregory Kusnick said,
October 11, 2015 @ 1:49 pm
To answer my own question, and perhaps Q. Pheevr's and Jonathon Owen's as well, the Post might have included that clause because they want us to believe they're protecting the identity of a whistleblower who was not authorized to speak at all. But it seems equally plausible that this was a deliberate, strategic leak in which the source was specifically tasked with speaking anonymously, and the Post is playing along by making him look like a whistleblower without having to come right out and say so. So perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate.
Jerry Friedman said,
October 11, 2015 @ 3:44 pm
The other way this could happen as an editing error would start from something like "He did not speak for the record because he was not authorized to do so."
BZ said,
October 12, 2015 @ 8:35 am
@Gregory,
People can speak on condition of anonymity for any number of reasons. Maybe he did not want to be associated with the information for personal reasons of some sort.
Lance said,
October 12, 2015 @ 2:33 pm
> I'm not sure there is an implicit contrasting adjunct in "He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so"; I read it as meaning '…because he was not authorized to speak.' It's awkward because it's ambiguous how much material is replaced by 'do so' ('speak' vs. 'speak on condition of anonymity'), but I find it gets better if I imagine it said with contrastive stress on authorized.
Indeed: compare this to a sentence like
(1) He spoke with us in his corner office overlooking Central Park within hours of being authorized to do so.
This has an interpretation where he finally got the authorization to speak with us in his corner office overlooking Central Park; but I think it also has a sensible interpretation where he finally got the authorization to speak (or perhaps, "speak with us"). do so does indeed want a VP antecedent, but I think that even without any kind of contrasting adjunct, the VP doesn't have to be the largest one available.
(I suppose you could compare: "He told me he has eaten insects without any remorse or revulsion every day since he was ten years old, but I still feel disinclined to do so". I think this is well-formed, and it seems clear to me that "do so" refers to "eat insects", without any of the adverbial clauses attached to it.)
Usually Dainichi said,
October 14, 2015 @ 3:04 am
@Lance
My take is that
"He spoke with us in his corner office overlooking Central Park within hours of being authorized to do so."
is felicitous because
"He spoke with us within hours of being authorized to do so."
is, and
"He told me he has eaten insects without any remorse or revulsion every day since he was ten years old, but I still feel disinclined to do so"
is felicitous because
"He told me he has eaten insects, but I still feel disinclined to do so"
is, but
"He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do so"
is not felicitous with "so" referring to speaking because
"He spoke because he was not authorized to do so"
doesn't make sense.
The condition of anonymity is not parenthetic, and the "because" makes that abundantly clear. On the other hand, I find
"He spoke on condition of anonymity although he was not authorized to do so"
perfectly fine, with "so" ambiguous as in your examples.
KevinM said,
October 14, 2015 @ 3:35 pm
@Gregory Kusnick
This is part of newspapers' tightening up of their use of "blind" (unsourced) quotations or items. It's been a trouble area, for obvious reasons. The NY Times and (I believe) the Post now require at least a minimal explanation for why the reporter is omitting the source's name.
richardelguru said,
October 15, 2015 @ 5:39 am
So: a naff anaphora?