Brian's post on non-clausal knowledge constructions such as "knows the way to San Jose" and "knows Dionne" scooped one of the points I thought up at the INPC, but I'm going to try to rephrase it anyway.
Earlier Brian adduced the oddity of
(3) ??Alex knows which places sell beer this time of night and Shea, who runs a couple of them
as evidence that "knows" is ambiguous between two relations: One that relates the knower to a proposition, one that relates the knower to a person; and (after Stanley and Williamson) he adduced the non-oddity of
(1) Alex knows which places sell beer this time of night and how to get to the nearest one
as evidence that knowledge-how and knowledge-that are the same relation. But
(4) ??Alex knows that John is coming up for trial and the facts of his case
sounds as odd as (3); which, by analogous argument, would indicate that "knows" is ambiguous between a relation that relates a knower to a proposition and a relation that relates a knower to facts. And that seems odd to me, as I've suggested. So I think this undercuts the conjunction argument that knowledge-how is knowledge-that.
Brian himself in the "knowledge the" post cites these examples:
(28) Andy knows the bar manager, and how to get free drinks off her.(29) Andy knows the bar manager, and what she likes to drink.
(30) ?Andy knows the bar manager, and that she likes Red Bull and vodkas.
The first two at least suggest that the conjunction test doesn't distinguish knowing a person from knowing the answer to questions.
In comments to Brian's "knowing how" post, Jonathan Ichikawa points out (effectively) that the odd sentences like (3) and (4) are the ones with clauses first and objects second; the OK sentences like (28)-(30) have the object first and the clause second.
I think (3) and (4) may sound odd because they're like garden-path sentences. When you don't find another wh- or that-term after the conjunction, you expect that the conjunction will be part of the relative clause, not that it will be another object of "know." But I know nothing about garden-path sentences, so don't take that account seriously unless you're able to make something of it.
Posted by Matt Weiner at May 5, 2004 06:51 PM