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Now I must ask - in this saying, are we talking about a rule that dictates behavior (e.g. No Smoking) or a standard practice ("as a rule") or a theory based on observation?
To the extent that language is ruled by logic, I surmise that the saying is applied to both cases:
If there were no exceptions, nobody would talk about a rule. You don't say: "the rule is for people not to walk through walls."
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Apropos of proving, I just found the word eprouvette, an apparatus for testing the strength of gunpowder.
I would like one of those in my oubliette.
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Wseeb says: If there were no exceptions, nobody would talk about a rule. You don't say: "the rule is for people not to walk through walls."
Ah, but surely here's another confusion of the two senses of rule. There certainly is a natural rule that people cannot walk through walls. If there were an exception, our rule would be sorely probed indeed.
On the other hand, a prescriptive rule is one regarding moral. or legal. behaviour. Again, in this case, any exceptions do not prove the rule, but violate it (often, in an ideal world, leading to punitive action against the rule-breaker).
There are, of course. more general rules in science and other studies, that attempt to outline 'natural laws' but which may, indeed, have exceptions. The simple 'law of averages' for instance, would lead you to believe that if you toss a coin a million times it will come up heads or tails in approximately equal proportions. But if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are on their way to being dead, it may come up heads only, for as many as a million times in a row. This exception certainly tests, or probes (I like that etymology - thanks Faldage and NickW) the rule, and allows us to be circumspect about its application.
In no circumstances does an exception actually prove (in the modern use of the term) the validity of a natural law.
As to the word 'prove' meaning test - we still have (albeit relatively archaic) terms using that meaning. Proving grounds for armaments are testing centres. And alcohol levels of 'proof' also relate to the alleged practice of 'proving' that a particular liquor contained the requisite levels of alcohol by seeing if it would burn (which it won't at less than about 40% v/v). This is why 40% v/v is 'one hundred degrees' proof - it simply passes the test of being able to be used as a fuel. From there, of course, you can then downgrade the standard and talk about 50 proof - meaning half the alcohol levels that will enable the old proof to be successful. And so on. Of course, in these standardised days, % by volume is more common, and easier to use. But it does raise the interesting point - 250 proof would, presumably, be pure alcohol.
Can anybody confirm or debunk this story of mine (which I seem to recall reading many cycles of the Sun ago) about how HM Customs 'proved' the quality of brandy the French were sending us?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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geez, I have lost my English tonight. Eprouvette is the French term for one of those little glass vials they use in labs (not beakers). The same thingies they use when they take a blood sample. What is it in English?
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Test Tubes ("Proof" Tubes)?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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In reply to:
I think it's widespread -- I won't say universal because I don't know -- that languages that don't mark case roles tend to have SVO order, e.g. English, Chinese, Malay/Indonesian. Not rigidly, as OVS is also very common in Malay
In Indonesian the relative pronoun (yang = English who/which/that) must be the subject of its verb. If necessary the verb must be made passive. Thus:
Candi bought the shirt = Candi telah membeli baju.
The shirt was bought by Candi = Baju telah dibeli Candi
The shirt which Candi bought = Baju yang telah dibeli Candi .
Thus SVO is preserved. If the agent of a passive verb is a pronoun it comes before the verb, making the sentence SOV
Baju telah saya beli The shirt was bought by me.
I can't think off-hand of an OVS construction.
Bingley
Bingley
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There certainly is a natural rule that people cannot walk through wallsSince Shanks found it worthy of a closer look, I cannot resist taking it one step further: In my view, a rule is very much a man-made thing. The expression "natural rule" does not sound right to me, contrary to "natural law", which is a different proposition. Strictly, a rule cannot be either proved or disproved, but only confirmed or violated. A rule that has been violated in a few cases may still continue to be accepted, again unlike a natural law. I would like also to mention rules of thumb which are very useful inspite of their exceptions  ..
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I can't think off-hand of an OVS construction.
What is telah? I don't know that word. I presume it's an adverb of simple past, similar to sudah.
What I mean by OVS in Indonesian is in your examples. I would say:
Candi bought the shirt = Candi membeli baju or Baju dibeli Candi.
The mem- marks subject focus and the di- marks object focus. Indonesian has only these two, but in Philippine languages you also get recipient-focus and location-focus with similar distinctions of verb marking.
You could call the di- construction a passive, but it is just as common as the other. In a language that has a passive, the passive is rarer than the active and involves demoting the previous subject to a different case, and the new subject takes on subject marking (such as verb agreement). As Indonesian has no such thing as agreement or cases, I'd prefer to say it has two constructions, SVO and OVS, with the verb marked for actant focus.
This view is undermined by the use of oleh, equaivalent to 'by': Baju dibeli oleh Candi. Since this construction is unlike the usual Austronesian pattern, I suspect it's a recent innovation based on European passives, but I don't know.
I also thought the pronoun prefixing was optional. The way I learnt it, you could say, with the pronouns exactly in parallel with nouns:
Saya membeli baju
or Baju membeli saya
or Baju membeli oleh saya
Or a pronoun-prefixing construction with a form of the older pronoun aku, viz:
Baju kubeli
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"Who own English? The hoi polloi in the universities– the writers of grammar books? The high and mighty of the OED?"
Am I the only one who flinched at that reference to "hoi polloi"?
Or was it intentional? It does wonderfully illustrate of troy's point: everybody knew what was meant even though the phrase was used in direct contradiction of the dictionary definition.
Although I largely agree with of troy's comments, surely at some point you have to tell Humpty Dumpty that he can't make words mean whatever he wants them to mean. (Or, in the case of this thread, play fast and loose with grammar.) I guess the trouble is we will never all agree on where that line is to be drawn.
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Dear Ms. Stein,
Welcome to you, and your screen name is wonderful!
No, we can't simply decide on our own that words will mean whatever we want them to, she snargled. I'd say that not only "the trouble", but the interesting part is that we'll never all agree on everything!
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