Identifying a new type of fallacy in political discourse

On April 4, 1918 Senator Overman urged his colleagues in the United States Senate to approve the Sedition Act of 1918 within two days. The paper outlines the context of the proposal, and argues that it involved a fallacy. An analysis of the fallacy is offered, and it is argued that in the study of political discourse it is often helpful to take the inner convictions of speakers into account

Reinstating and Defining Ad Socordiam as an Informal Fallacy: A case study from a political debate in the early American republic

The paper sheds light on an important procedural debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on the American Federal Bill of Rights in the summer of 1789. To study the debate, it is proposed that it is useful to draw on the informal fallacy of ad socordiam, and an illustration is provided, with attention paid to the question of how to identify and analyze the fallacy

Response to my commentator

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“Those states … will hardly adopt them”: On a fallacy in political discourse in the summer of 1789

A type of ad socordiam is identified in its context, with data from debates on the Bill of Rights in 1789. The fallacy involves a hidden intention as a salient feature. The study examines the ques-tion of how inferences can be made about hidden intentions. Further, it examines the relation of the fallacy identified to another type of ad socordiam

Comparing explanatory principles of complement selection statistically : a case study based on Canadian English

Several factors have been identified in the recent literature to explain variation in the selection of sentential complements in recent English, and the article begins with a survey of such factors. The article then offers a case study of the impact of such factors on non-finite complements of the adjective afraid on the basis of the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English. Attention is paid for instance to the Extraction and Choice Principles, passive lower predicates, and text type. Multivariate analysis is applied to compare and to shed light on such different explanatory principles. The Choice Principle proves to be by far the most significant predictor of the alternation, while the heavily correlated syntactic feature of Voice appears non-significant. Fiction, as opposed to the informative registers, shows a notable preference for to infinitives, though this finding needs to be replicated in datasets where controlling for author idiolect is possible. Theoretically plausible odds ratios are observed on the Extraction Principle and negation of the predicate, but they are not statistically significant. In the former case, this may well be due to the variable’s collinearity with the Choice Principle and its low overall frequency, resulting in a low effective sample size.Peer reviewe

Facing Two Ways Syntactically : On the Grammar and Use of Promise and Threaten in Three Regional Varieties

The predicates promise and threaten with a to infinitive complement can be used in two main senses, with each sense representing a different argument structure: subject control, and subject to subject raising. Recent work has shown both uses to have been available for several centuries, with the raising variant emerging later than the control. The present investigation aims to provide insight into the usage patterns of the two predicates in the Englishes of New Zealand, Britain, and North America. The former is compared to the two latter varieties to help further our understanding of the complex system of the grammar of English predicate complementation. The data is examined from quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and the results indicate not only significant variation in usage among the varieties, but also high levels of correlation in some areas. New findings emerge from the study, including on the notion of stance, offering fresh avenues of research into the nature of the complementation patterns examined and their use in three core varieties of English.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Analyzing the Gerundial Patterns of prevent : New Corpus Evidence from Recent English

One well-known difference between British and American English concerns the verb prevent. In both varieties, the verb is commonly found in constructions with NP from -ing, as in [...] the extreme temperature of the cold tenderises the flesh and prevents it from becoming tough (NOW Corpus 2010), and in British English it is also commonly found in corresponding constructions lacking the preposition from, as in Morgan [...] fastened a belt around his wrists to prevent him saving himself (NOW Corpus 2011). There are major unresolved issues relating to the two types of constructions illustrated. One question is whether the constructions involve object control or a Raising rule. One novel idea proposed is that an ACC -ing analysis should be available for the pattern without from. The British and American segments of the NOW corpus offer good sources of data, which have not been used in earlier work on prevent.Peer reviewe