Yet you claimed previously that we can draw major conclusions from such minor differences such as the speakers choice of have to/must. I agree with what you seem to be saying here - we can't!
Aaaccchh!!! I guess I'm failing to make myself clear here,
woodcutter. I do
not agree with this. Quite the opposite, in fact. Choice of details like
must/have to do have a precision that we can bring to bear on our efforts to interpret what people really mean. Nothing I have said here contradicts that as far as I can see.
Perhaps an(other) illustration is in order here. It seems to me like I am beating this point to the ground, but so far it doesn't seem to be germinating, or at least not surviving to maturity.
Richard Dawkins is a name that many of you Europeans will know. He is an Oxford professor and author of several award-winning books in the natural sciences. His specialty is evolutionary biology, and, if my memory serves me properly, he was recently described as the most popular public scientist in Britain (from his writings). He certainly is a very smart man. My youngest son and I had the pleasure of attending one of his many public lectures a couple of months ago here in California at CalTech in Pasadena. Without question, he knows how to use English to good effect, as anyone who has read any of his books can testify.
In his book
River Out Of Eden, published in 1995 by BasicBooks, on p. 53-54, Dawkins is discussing "Mitochondrial Eve", sometimes called "African Eve", the single female who is a recent ancestor of all humans alive in the world today. At this point in the book, he is concerned with some peoples' mistaken impression that she was the first person, the only person alive in her time. He says [and I quote the next paragraph from his book]:
"The "Eve" sobriquet has had unfortunate consequences. Some enthusiasts have run away with the idea that she must have been a lonely woman, the only woman on Earth, the ultimate genetic bottleneck, even a vindication of Genesis! [
LL: Note the "...must have been" in the last sentence.] This is a complete misunderstanding. The correct claim is not that she was the only woman on Earth, nor even that the population was relatively small during her time. Her companions, of both sexes, may have been both numerous and fecund. ...The correct claim is only that Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent woman of whom it can be said that all modern humans are descended from her in the female-only line. There
has to be
a woman of whom this claim can be made...[emphasis his, not mine, in this last sentence]." [He goes on to explain the way that mitochondria, which we all must have to be alive, are passed from our mothers, and only from our mothers, which makes his claim necessarily true.]
Now, look carefully at the context and the cotext. In the earlier (
must have been) sentence, notice that he is disputing the claims made by those who feel that "
she must have been a lonely woman." The only reason he can do that is that he frames it so that it is the enthusiasts themselves claiming the necessity that M.E. was alone. The necessity was generated by the enthusiasts, not by the logic of the situation. Conversly, later on, when Dawkins asserts that it is the situation, and the structural logic that follows, and
not Dawkins himself, that makes it necessary that M. E. actually lived, he uses (and emphasizes)
has to to communicate that logical necessity. He could
not have used "
must have been" in that place with the same force of meaning. The choice between
must have been and
has to be has a huge effect on his ultimate meaning. It is the farthest thing from a "minor difference."
Larry Latham
