{"id":21370,"date":"2015-09-22T07:25:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T12:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=21370"},"modified":"2015-09-22T08:48:45","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T13:48:45","slug":"absolved-of-having-done-nothing-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=21370","title":{"rendered":"Absolved of having done nothing wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last month, the hockey star Patrick Kane was accused of rape, and investigations of the matter continue. Last week, he joined the Chicago Blackhawks' training camp, and at a press event organized by the team, he read a statement that addressed the accusations as follows:<\/p>\n

While I have too much respect for the legal process
\nto comment on an on-going matter<\/span>
\n I am confident<\/span>
\n that once all the facts are brought to light<\/span>
\n I will be absolved of having done nothing wrong<\/span><\/p>\n

[Chris Hine and Stacy St. Clair, \"Patrick Kane 'confident' he will be 'absolved' of wrongdoing<\/a>\", Chicago Tribune 9\/17\/2015.]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This must be in Upside-down Court, where defendants are accused (and either convicted or absolved) of being innocent. The COCA corpus has 14 instance of \"be absolved of X\", where X =\u00a0responsibility (7), blame (4), liability, \u00a0crime, prosecution <\/em>— and\u00a0the responsibilities in question are not for praiseworthy or valuable things. What\u00a0someone is\u00a0absolved of is normally a sin or fault or crime, or the consequences of a sin or fault or crime.<\/p>\n

David Haugh caught the misnegation<\/a>, if not the upside-down presupposition [\"Here's a question regarding Patrick Kane news conference: Why bother?<\/a>\", Chicago Tribune<\/em> 9\/17\/2015]:<\/p>\n

[W]hoever edited Kane's prepared statement didn't prepare long enough because being \"absolved of having done nothing wrong,\" literally means he did something wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Kass agreed, but added a comment on the active vocabulary of hockey players\u00a0[\"'Presumed innocent' doesn't seem to apply to Patrick Kane<\/a>\", Chicago Tribune 9\/18\/2015]:<\/p>\n

Yes, it's true. Kane foolishly spoke words that said he did something wrong. If he had replaced \"nothing wrong\" with \"anything wrong,\" he might have coasted. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It's also true that I've never heard hockey players use the word \"absolved.\" Never.<\/span><\/p>\n

This leaves us with a common problem that I've called\u00a0\"attributional abduction<\/a>\". Did\u00a0the lawyers who prepared Kane's statement actually write\u00a0the incoherent sentence that he uttered? Or did he misread the written statement, out of unfamiliarity with the verb\u00a0absolve, <\/em>or a preference for negative concord, or general situational stress?<\/p>\n

At least in this case we have the recording, so the usual concerns about journalistic quotation practices [see \"Journalistic quotation accuracy<\/a>\", 8\/21\/2013] can be set aside.<\/p>\n

[h\/t Carol Saller]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, the hockey star Patrick Kane was accused of rape, and investigations of the matter continue. Last week, he joined the Chicago Blackhawks' training camp, and at a press event organized by the team, he read a statement that addressed the accusations as follows: While I have too much respect for the legal process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-semantics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21370"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21385,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21370\/revisions\/21385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}