An unusual use of "at all" here:
Hiroshi rarely speaks to either of them, and though his bedroom is 15 feet from the kitchen, he has had only two meals with them in the last two years. Mieko would gladly cook three meals a day for him if he'd eat them. "It's very hard for me as a mother," she said. She occasionally finds empty packages of fermented soybeans in the kitchen garbage can - one clue that he eats at all.
See my previous discussion of "at all." As far as I can tell there's no conventional NPI licenser in the last sentence. The hints of negativity I can find are that the context suggests that there is doubt that he eats at all, and that he doesn't eat very much, but I wouldn't dare trying to work that up into a theory of NPI licensing.
The whole article is extremely sad. Hiroshi's case is kind of the worst-case scenario for grad students; the disproportionate feeling of failure when you do something poorly, and the feeling that life has passed you by while you were in grad school. Though the underlying economic and social mechanisms are probably very different in Japan.
via fortuna
Posted by Matt Weiner at January 16, 2006 08:10 AMThe use of 'at all' sounded like a mistake, as if the author had omitted 'the only..' in front of 'clue.'
When must a usage be explained, and when can it be dismissed as a mistake?
Sounds exactly like graduate school to me, though.
Posted by: Cala at January 16, 2006 01:44 PMCala, it sounds like a mistake to me too. I don't have an answer to the question.
One thing is that NPI-licensing intuitions are often very strong, it seems to me. If I said "It sounds like a mistake at all" it kind of doesn't make sense, whereas the sentence from the article does make sense even if it sounds funny. See also Brian Weatherson getting befuddled by Pittsburghesque "anymore." Perhaps the comprehensibility of this is evidence for something; but maybe that's explained by its closeness to "the only clue that he eats at all," which licenses NPIs in fairly straightforward fashion (I think).
Posted by: Matt Weiner at January 17, 2006 03:08 PM"The only clue that he eats at all" is clearly the conventional thing to say.
"One clue that he eats at all" to me sounds atypical but I wouldn't go so far as to say it sounds like a mistake.
"Two clues that he eats at all," similar to one clue.
"Six clues that he eats at all," starting to sound strange.
"Ten clues that he eats at all," somewhat rescued by the familiar formula of top-ten lists?
"Overwhelming evidence that he eats at all," no licensing of the NPI.
Posted by: Richard Mason at January 19, 2006 11:32 AMFurther reflection: I think "six clues that he eats at all" is still acceptable. I think ten is the limit. "Many clues that he eats at all" is right out.
Posted by: Richard Mason at January 19, 2006 11:40 AMAnd perhaps the diagnostic here is if there's an implicit "only," or you can insert the modifier "only" without (much) changing the intent of the sentence.
Although, perhaps the reason the newspaper left out the explicit "only" in the first place was literal-mindedness, and/or a fear of hyperbole. The soybean package isn't the only clue that he eats at all, there's also the fact that he's still alive, etc.
Posted by: Richard Mason at January 19, 2006 11:47 AMThe Chronicle of Higher Education had an article on what I might call "Defining failure up"--the sense of failure a PhD or PhD candidate has when s/he doesn't get a tenure job: http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2005/03/2005032401c/careers.html
One problem is that there seems to be a single track, with many ways to fall off it but not obvious ways to get back on. Note that the Japanese phenomenon often starts with school refusal, well before college age. As Matt says, it is culture-specific. For starters, these young men are living with their parents. And one speculates that in the U.S. some of these kids would be shooting up their high school.
The kids that shoot up high schools in the U.S. are pretty far out on the bullied/misfit bell curve, I think; and the kids who are that far out in Japan may commit suicide. Still, it does seem culture-specific.
The Chronicle article seems to have gone away, but the fact is that you're probably better off washing out of grad school in the middle than getting a PhD and not getting a tenure-track job. If you leave grad school in the middle, you're younger, you can choose to live where you want, and you don't have the temptation to hang on one more year in case you get the tenure-track job this time. Whereas, if you have a PhD and no tenure-track job, you may spend a while living a bunch of different places for a year at a time, with no control over a lot of aspects of your life so long as you're trying to stay in academia.
Posted by: Matt Weiner at January 20, 2006 01:24 PMI seem to have missed this post by a week.
Anyway, I believe this is the Chronicle article: "A Ph.D. and a Failure." It opens:
As graduate career counselors at two major research universities, we encounter the F-word a lot, but not the one you think. The F-word we hear is "failure" -- a nasty, horrible utterance applied to many an overachieving Ph.D. who falls short of finding a tenure-track job.Fear of that word -- for the summa cum laude, the Phi Beta Kappa, or the NSF grant recipient -- can become debilitating and demoralizing, turning a once confident and optimistic young adult into a depressed, panic-ridden, and paralyzed recluse. Unfortunately, we are not exaggerating.
What you say about getting out before the Ph.D. seems right, and it's why I'm right now trying - I'm ABD - to figure out a way to finish the Ph.D. while preparing to find a nonacademic career. If I can't - I'm not sure what my program is going to think of that - I'll probably just leave; I've already taken a leave of absence anyway, so I'm nearly out already.
Posted by: eb at January 26, 2006 12:34 AMIt may depend on the subject. Some PhDs actually get nonacademic employment. In fact, even humanities PhDs might find jobs at journals (I heard of a philosophy ABD who did that last year) or in other kinds of organizations. I recently worked with a number of ABDs who developed educational tests.
Posted by: Matt's mom at January 30, 2006 03:31 PMThere's no rule that says you have to stay in a field because you got a PhD. People should go to grad school, and finish PhDs, because they want to go to grad school. ("It beats working" is an acceptable, if lame, reason.) That is, people should not stick out a miserable experience in the hopes of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; this may be the only time grad school has ever been denoted by a rainbow. If you don't bail now, you can always bail later. There is always an alternative.
There are two types of people who don't know that there is an alternative, and live in cloistered environments that prevent them from recognizing it: 1. Hiroshi, 2. tenured professors.
Oh yeah, and demographic number 3: depressed to suicidal graduate students. I knew one of these. On the other hand, the people I knew who continued on, got PhDs and went on into other careers may very well be happier that the ones who stayed in the tenure rat race.
There's no rule that says you have to stay in a field because you got a PhD. People should go to grad school, and finish PhDs, because they want to go to grad school. ("It beats working" is an acceptable, if lame, reason.) That is, people should not stick out a miserable experience in the hopes of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; this may be the only time grad school has ever been denoted by a rainbow. If you don't bail now, you can always bail later. There is always an alternative.
There are two types of people who don't know that there is an alternative, and live in cloistered environments that prevent them from recognizing it: 1. Hiroshi, 2. tenured professors.
Oh yeah, and demographic number 3: depressed to suicidal graduate students. I knew one of these. On the other hand, the people I knew who continued on, got PhDs and went on into other careers may very well be happier that the ones who stayed in the tenure rat race.