In comments here I wrote:
(1) If there were only one Pick'n'Save in that area I would have a better handle on where it was.
Does this make sense? It seems grammatical to me, but...
it also seems elliptical--I'm not sure whether this would be considered syntactic--in that "better" requires something that it's better than. So (1) means the same thing as
(2) If there were only one Pick'n'Save in that area I would have a better handle on where it was than the handle I actually have.
But the second occurrence of 'handle' requires explanation: handle on what? So:
(3) If there were only one Pick'n'Save in that area I would have a better handle on where it was than the handle I actually have on where it is.
And now the last 'it' is problematic. While the first 'it' can refer to the sole Pick'n'Save in the area in the counterfactual situation I describe, the last 'it' is to be evaluated in the actual world--in which there are two Pick'n'Saves in the area, and so there is no 'it' whose location I can have a handle on.
Maybe this fuzziness just comes from the basic problem raised by ontological confusion: It's hard to say exactly what I don't have a handle on. I think (well, not any more) that there is one Pick'n'Save, whose location I don't know well. But in fact when I'm trying to think about one Pick'n'Save, I'm actually thinking about two. And though there are some things that enables me to get right--if I go south and east I'll hit a Pick'n'Save--there are other things I get wrong about this.
The solution is to read up on ontological confusion, but I wonder if there's anything distinctive about the linguistic phenomenon in (1).
Posted by Matt Weiner at April 22, 2005 12:16 PMInteresting problem! I think Lewis' semantics for counterfactuals help you out here. You are saying,
In the nearest possible worlds in which there is only one PickNSave, I have a better handle on where *that* [demonstrating] PickNSave is than the handle I have on where that same PickNSave is in the actual world.
One assumption here is transworld identity, or at least interestingly selective counterpart relations, between PickNSave stores across worlds.
Another is that, in the nearest possible worlds in which there is only one PNS, the PNS there is is one of the ones that's nearby in the actual world. If, say, the hypothetically lone PNS would be a completely new PNS, then you have no handle on the whereabouts of that (nonexistent) store in the actual world, and so your sentence is false or missing a presupposition or something.
Anyway, great little problem!
Posted by: Heath White at April 22, 2005 03:18 PMCan anyone explain what the PNS is? I am pretty new to that topic...
Posted by: private at May 7, 2005 12:28 PMIt's a grocery store.
Posted by: Mat at May 7, 2005 03:39 PMHeath suggested: "In the nearest possible worlds in which there is only one PickNSave, I have a better handle on where *that* [demonstrating] PickNSave is than the handle I have on where that same PickNSave is in the actual world."
This seems wrong to me, at least given the information from the original post. I think the truth conditions of your utterance are those of: If there were only one Pick'n'Save in that area I would have a better handle on the locations of all the Pick'n'Saves in the area than the handle I actually have on the locations of all the Pick'n'Saves in the area.
Ignoring the awkwardness that arises when one beats a metaphor to death like this, I think the explanation is that the 'it' here is not strictly anaphoric, but more like a bound variable in some way.
Posted by: Nicole Wyatt at May 9, 2005 11:41 AM