No longer the only X
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I was puzzled for a few minutes by the following one-sentence summary of an editorial on the New York Times Opinion page:
Thanks to five justices on the Supreme Court, the United States is no longer the only country to impose sentences of life without parole on its teenagers.
I couldn't think how our Supreme Court justices could make some other country impose such sentences, and I really couldn't "get" the intended reading (we will no longer impose such sentences, so there will from now on be NO such countries) — it didn't even occur to me until I was really forced to it. Am I alone? This made me realize that for me, only is really strongly presuppositional: to no longer be the only X means for me that you're still an X but no longer the only one.
But they are the NYT; and if I don't see them changing it pretty quickly, I'll have to assume that for their copy-editors, you can also stop being the only X by ceasing to be an X.
Joe said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:23 pm
That's interesting. I had the exact opposite response. At first, I only got the intended meaning. It wasn't until I thought about it that I got the meaning it had for you.
Joe said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:28 pm
Sorry, I forgot to add that my initial was no doubt influenced by the fact that I already knew what the SC had decided. I agree completely with your characterization of "only."
Gravity Allen said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:29 pm
For a few seconds (at least) I could only get the no-longer-being-an-X-by-ceasing-to-be-an-X reading. But I wonder if that isn't because of the implausibility of having an influence over other countries.
Faldone said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:29 pm
I had the same reaction as Joe, but I don't know what I would have thought if I didn't already know what the Supreme Court decision was.
Quicksand said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:36 pm
Interesting. I, too, knew of the SC decision, but my interpretation went down Prof. Partee's path.
"We're not the only ones now? Huh, who else?"
Realizing that didn't make any sense in the factual context, I had to force myself to parse it as intended.
jfruh said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:43 pm
I second Quicksand — I knew about the decision, but my gut reaction to the "no longer the only x" sentence was still "someone else has started x-ing."
Army1987 said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:43 pm
I read it once, understood it the same way as Barbara Partee, decided it was absurd, read it again and got the intended meaning.
pjharvey said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
Yep, got your reading initially and only by focussing hard did I see the intended meaning. Fascinating!
Rubrick said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:49 pm
I too was thrown by it at first, though not for as long as you report.
What's interesting is that I can't come up with a concise alternative that conveys the intended meaning more clearly. I can do no better than "Before today, there was only one country which imposed sentences of life without parole on its teenagers: the United States. Now, thanks to five justices on the Supreme Court, there are none." Even that's not great ("None what? Teenagers? Justices? States?")
Ralph Hickok said,
May 18, 2010 @ 3:56 pm
I read it the same way, Now that I know what it was meant to say, I think it's "wrong." I would never get the intended meaning from that sentence. But I guess it does make sense, sort of. I'm currently the only Ralph Hickok in Massachusetts. If I move out of state, I'll no longer be the only Ralph Hickok in Massachusetts. Still …
Thomas Westgard said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:02 pm
What makes it odd is that we usually don't talk about the empty set, especially in journalism for the general public. The set of "Nations that currently impose this sentence on teenagers" has changed from a set of one entry (US), to an empty set. But the concept still exists, so the sentence is logically sound. Funny. Definitely needed a better editor.
My rewrite: "Today, thanks to five justices on the United States Supreme Court, no country imposes sentences of life without parole on its teenagers."
Alex R said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:03 pm
Yup, I read it the wrong way, too. Very confusing. (British English, unaware of the decision beforehand.)
Mr. Shiny & New said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:13 pm
I think the sentence is correct but I also read the incorrect meaning first. I'd say this falls into the category of conventions where the secondary meaning is meant to surprise the reader. I'd suggest
"Thanks to five justices on the Supreme Court, the United States no longer has the distinction of being the only country to impose sentences of life without parole on its teenagers."
as an alternative. Does that sound clearer to people?
Derry said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:15 pm
I wonder how this is affected by nationality. I'm British and didn't know of this decision, but interpreted it, like Joe, in the way intended and had to think quite hard to find another meaning.
Ralphy said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:16 pm
I didn't get it at all until you explained it. To Mr. Shiny & New, that sounds even worse to me; it's helped only because I already know what the sentence aims to say.
Russell said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:26 pm
The COCA has 40 instances of "no longer the only," and they all have the "now there's more" interpretation.
But I did a Google search of "stopped being the only" (the string has no matches in the COCA) and several of the results have the "now there's none" interpretation (below).
Maybe it's because "stop being" is more consistent with, or even implies, a change arising due only to internal processes (possibly even a conscious decision to stop), in which case you can only understand it as "now there's none" (unless the stopper brought about the stop-being-only state by making someone else join the category — but it seems unlikely that one would describe such a situation with "stop being")
exx:
It is now time that Africa stopped being the only continent where a school child can have access to knowledge and science only through a language other than the one spoken in his family!
Perhaps if Christians stopped being the only religion opposing human rights and persecuting gays, pro choice and so much more things might change!!
This spring, Massachusetts stopped being the only state to set a single rate for all insurers. [now MA does something different]
Jim said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:30 pm
I read the intended meaning just fine, but I think it was partially influenced by the internal-to-US context set up by the first half of the sentence. Consider instead the difference between:
and
Although even writing it out like that, I still find the first sentence no more surprising than the second, possibly even less so. And yet, Ralph's example above sounds odd to me, in that it seems to strongly imply that there's now more than one such Ralph. I'm not sure why I'm interpreting the two cases so differently, though, since superficially they appear very similar.
Bruce said,
May 18, 2010 @ 4:58 pm
Canadian living in Britain
Didn't know anything about the decision
Immediately received the intended meaning
Had to think to get the other meaning.
Tim Silverman said,
May 18, 2010 @ 5:15 pm
British speaker here—got the intended meaning, had to think for a bit to get the other meaning.
Cali said,
May 18, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
Spaniard here with English as a SL: I knew about the news already but I didn't know that the US was the only country with life sentences for teenagers. I got the intended meaning and had to reread the post a couple of times to get the other one.
anon said,
May 18, 2010 @ 5:30 pm
I had reread to find the intended meaning. Earlier in the day, I saw a different headline for the same event, and reading this headline I started to question whether I'd misread the earlier one. Would something involving "still" make this clearer? E.g., consider "Thanks to five justices on the Supreme Court, the United States is no longer the only country to still impose sentences of life without parole on its teenagers," or "… still imposing sentences …"?
Sarra said,
May 18, 2010 @ 6:06 pm
I wonder how this is affected by nationality. I'm British and didn't know of this decision, but interpreted it, like Joe, in the way intended and had to think quite hard to find another meaning.
BrE, didn't get intended meaning at all until a short while after it was pointed out.
Dave said,
May 18, 2010 @ 6:20 pm
American, knew about the decision, still didn't get the intended reading without some surprise and rereading.
Gordon Campbell said,
May 18, 2010 @ 7:03 pm
Ozglish speaker here: read it seventeen times, still don't get the intended meaning. Have they ruled that we have to lock up our teenagers for life? What, all of them? Sounds a bit harsh. Please explain.
SilenceIsGolden said,
May 18, 2010 @ 7:28 pm
(German living in Canada; translator)
I knew about the decision before and thus had a hard time getting the non-intended meaning.
Maybe it could've been clearer if the summary included a time reference, e.g., "Before today's ruling by five justices on the Supreme Court, the United States was the only country to impose sentences of life without parole on its teenagers."
On the other hand, I don't think there is a need to change the headline, as it achieved the intended goal: cause curiosity and get you to read the article! ;-)
Katherine said,
May 18, 2010 @ 7:29 pm
I thought Bruce had written a limerick of some kind.
New Zealander, I found it a bit strange as written and agree with "stopped being the only" (or "ceased being the only") as a less ambiguous way to write it.
Karen said,
May 18, 2010 @ 7:39 pm
I can get both meanings out of it. Context helps disambiguate.
I imagine it was written that way to drive home the only-ness of our (former) position.
Dave M said,
May 18, 2010 @ 7:45 pm
I'm with Quicksand and jfruh – I (an American) knew of the decision and still had a *very* hard time reading the sentence in the intended way. But now that I see it, it actually does sound okay (I have heard it before). This is puzzling, as I would have thought that context would have done it for me. Thanks for the interesting post!
Luiz said,
May 18, 2010 @ 7:52 pm
My guess is that if you trust your supreme court, you would find the intended reading easier to get. In particular, because the starting words "Thanks to" set the tone to you reading. You can either read it with a praise, or as a sarcastic remark.
As a Brazilian I do not trust the justice that much, so I read it in a negative way. I originally understood that the US was still imposing no paroles to teenagers, and that "thanks" was pure sarcasm.
Stephen Jones said,
May 18, 2010 @ 8:06 pm
It's factually untrue anyway. The Supreme Court decision did not ban life sentences without parole for minors convicted of murder (the majority in that situation).
Nicki said,
May 18, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
American living in China
Did not know we were the only country with such a law.
Did not know of the Supreme Court decision.
Immediately understood the intended meaning, had to reconsider to see the other interpretation. Perhaps I'll set my advanced ESL students on the case in our class tonight!
Alex said,
May 18, 2010 @ 9:31 pm
I think the intended meaning would come out better if you use the negative rather than the positive formulation:
BW said,
May 18, 2010 @ 11:10 pm
I'm a non-native speaker living in the US. I didn't know about the decision and only got the intended meaning after reading the post.
I like Alex' re-writing solution the best – no chance of misunderstandings.
ellael said,
May 18, 2010 @ 11:12 pm
my reaction was the same. Had to reread several times to get past the original wtf response.
Dan Scherlis said,
May 18, 2010 @ 11:36 pm
@Katherine, I fear that you've been disappointed. So:
One native informant (that's me)
Was moved to quickly agree:
Having missed the Court's news,
He was duly confused
By the headline we got from Partee.
Tamara said,
May 19, 2010 @ 12:26 am
Alex's rewriting is more clear but it has a slightly different meaning than the original. It implies that there are other countries that had such a law at one time and have since changed it, which may or may not be true, I really have no idea. It's at least possible that we are the only country that ever sentenced minors to life without parole.
Not that I can come up with a better alternative.
Sam said,
May 19, 2010 @ 1:32 am
Not to mention that the set "teenagers" includes non-minor 18- and 19-year-olds, whose sentences are not affected by this decision.
Bad summary. No biscuit.
J. Goard said,
May 19, 2010 @ 1:48 am
I'm with Barbara. I couldn't think of the other reading for several long moments, even knowing the kind of thing I was looking for.
Interestingly, sole and lone do not seem to carry the presupposition for me. With those, I would almost have to have the reading where the U.S. no longer does it.
Plukey said,
May 19, 2010 @ 2:21 am
I was going to say:
The United States was the only country to impose sentences of life without parole on its teenagers. The Supreme Court has decided that such sentences should continue no longer.
But that creates is own ambiguity…
Barbara Partee said,
May 19, 2010 @ 4:57 am
I'm glad I'm not the only one who had trouble getting the intended meaning.
I'm actually surprised at how many CAN get it with no difficulty. For you-all, what about the apparent implication: If the U.S. is no longer the only country to impose life sentences …, then doesn't it follow that the U.S. is not the only country to impose life sentences … ? And could you accept that one as true if no country (including the US) imposes life sentences? If you agree with my strong feeling that there's no such possibility in that case (and that was the data assumed in Larry Horn's classic 1969 paper, then the puzzle is why "no longer" should be so different, at least for some speakers, than "not". (I agree with J.Goard that 'sole' and 'lone' are different from 'only'. But I'm surprised if with 'only', 'no longer' behaves differently from 'not'.)
@Dan Scherlis – Thanks, I've never been the final rhyme in a limerick before! I'll save that one!
Barbara Partee said,
May 19, 2010 @ 5:00 am
Update: the NYT has apparently received no complaints about it — the sentence remains unchanged now that the item is stored away under "Past Editorials".
Michou said,
May 19, 2010 @ 5:01 am
English is not my mother-tongue. I think that the context helped to make the 'no longer does it' reading more salient.
For me, it's because 'X is the only country to Y' is very common in international news, as in 'Iran/Israel/China is the only country to…' (is it a snowclone?)
I checked and got 7,260,000 Google hits for "the US is the only country to …" '
Hamish said,
May 19, 2010 @ 5:19 am
I read it the intended way .. after having to think about it for a few seconds. It took me quite a bit longer to see the second interpretation. The reason? The use of 'Supreme Court' first up, which in my mind automatically meant the US Supreme Court, which is why the intended meaning came to me and not the alternative.
If, however, it had referred to 'High Court' or had used a turn of phrase leaving out 'Supreme Court', my first reading would have been the alternate.
Frans said,
May 19, 2010 @ 6:24 am
@Barbara Partee: I'm with you. I agree with Russell's assessment that "stopped being the only" would probably have been a lot clearer.
Ginger Yellow said,
May 19, 2010 @ 7:15 am
I agree with Jim's analysis. I had to think quite hard to see how it could be read any other way than intended. But I think that if the clause in question had not been preceded by "Thanks to five justices on the Supreme Court", the other reading would have been at least as natural.
Joe said,
May 19, 2010 @ 7:24 am
@Barbara Partee:
I agree that, in cases like "X is no longer the only game in town," X is still X. So I tend to agree with you, the NYT example should bug me, but for some reason it doesn't. (As I said, at first I had trouble understanding your reading of it).
There's something odd about sentences beginning with "Thanks to" and whether the proposition expressed in the main clause is something perceived to be negative. (I'm not sure if I am expressing it correctly).
For example, I can imagine someone saying around 1950 (ignore whether it is true),
"Thanks to the Rosenbergs, the US is no longer the only nation to possess nuclear weapons."
To me, there is no question that the US still possesses nuclear weapons, but, again, I know the context. But here's another (and again ignore whether the proposition is true):
Thanks to Obama, the US is no longer the only major industrial nation that does not guarantee healthcare to its citizens.
Again, I have no trouble parsing this to mean that Obama has put an end to the US's unique status as the only major industrial nation that doesn't provide health care to its citizens (but, again, I know the context).
It could be that I don't often use "sole" or "lone" very often (both sound very formal to me, and, as much as I am ashamed to admit it, I can imagine myself misspelling "sole" as "soul"). So it may that my use of "only" is expanding to cover my shrinking usage of "sole" and "lone" (I agree that if the semantics of "only" is changing, it doesn't yet show up in CODA for constructions like "no longer the only X").
jimbino said,
May 19, 2010 @ 10:14 am
"If I was going to go phishing, with English as my medium of communication in the ocean of dupes out there, I think I would first learn a little bit about the cultural practices of the English-speaking world."
I think, if I were to maintain a language blog with English as my medium of communication in the ocean of dupes out there, I would first make a vow not to abuse the subjunctive mood in conditional-contrary-to-fact constructions.
If I was going to go phishing, I wasn't thinking right.
Joe said,
May 19, 2010 @ 10:27 am
Huh? (on a lot of levels)
Terry Collmann said,
May 19, 2010 @ 2:01 pm
Jimbino, was the sentence you are complaining about in any way ambiguous or difficult to understand?
If not, what's your problem? Nobody under 90 uses the subjunctive in English any more because it's unnecessary: meaning is conveyed perfectly well without it.
Terry Collmann said,
May 19, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
Oh, and Jimbino – you're commenting on the wrong thread. You meant to comment on the next one up.
Charles said,
May 19, 2010 @ 3:38 pm
"It's factually untrue anyway. The Supreme Court decision did not ban life sentences without parole for minors convicted of murder (the majority in that situation)."
Correct. It should also say "the only Western democracy" as there are plenty of less civilized countries where teenagers are subject not only to life sentences, but outright execution. So it's poorly phrased, ambiguous, and inaccurate. And this from the Paper of Record!
Ellen K. said,
May 19, 2010 @ 4:06 pm
Wow… where'd those last 50 years go? Last I knew I was only 40…
I found "If I was going to go phishing…" unremarkable; I understood it without noticing the grammar. Still, I do use "If I were…". Not sure if I use it all the time or not, but I do use it.
Azimuth said,
May 20, 2010 @ 3:01 pm
Did anyone notice that the final line of the editorial repeats the logical ambiguity of the summary?
"Until Monday, the United States was the only country to impose such sentences on its teenagers; thanks to five justices on the court, the world now stands in unanimous agreement."
In mathematics, you shouldn't write "no longer the only" or "not 1" and expect people to know you mean "0".
Don said,
May 21, 2010 @ 9:10 am
I sent the NYT's "After Deadline" editor a link to this entry. Let's see whether he notes it.
Anonymous said,
May 24, 2010 @ 7:26 pm
But it's smug, which is all that matters to the editors…
Rick S said,
June 22, 2010 @ 11:55 am
No one seems to have remarked on how strongly a negative binds to 'only'. 'Not the only X that Y' seems much more likely to be parsed as [not the only] [X that Y] rather than [not] [the only X that Y], especially where Y is a relatively long phrase. And even more especially when it denotes an empty set in a topic sentence, as Thomas Westgard said. Since when is an empty set the likely topic of a news story? 'The U.S. is no longer the only country consisting of 48 states' is true, but not newsworthy.
I think the reporter was doing some sneaky editorializing. They so wanted to rub the U.S.'s nose in its shameful past behavior that they elevated a subsidiary fact to the topic position. (The first sentence doesn't even mention, or only very obliquely mentions, the court's decision, which is the true topic). In order to do so, they had to use the phrase 'no longer' to shift the past action into a present time frame. But also, it wasn't enough to say 'Thanks to five justices on the Supreme Court, the United States no longer imposes sentences of life without parole on its teenagers', which would have been clear and unambiguous. That wouldn't have been sufficiently damning; they wanted to get the 'only country [in the world]' condemnation in there with it. So it became 'no longer the only country', which created the ambiguity.
Elevating the condemnatory statement to topic position made it appear to BE the topic, which conditioned us to believe that the story was about barbarous sentencing of teenagers in (no longer only) the U.S. If you were aware of the court's decision ahead of time, you had a counter pressure that prodded you to the alternate parsing. What's most interesting, I think, is how difficult it is to break whichever binding you chose in order to see the other one.