I feel compelled.
I have to complete an ethics quiz to be allowed do my research, but I don’t think this says what IRB means it to say: “Only qualified scientists must conduct research.”
Now of course I’m pretty sure they intend this to mean that research must only be conducted by qualified research scientists — there are to be no amateurs with clipboards in the lab. What it actually says, though, is that only those individuals who are qualified scientists are compelled to conduct research. Carpenters, plumbers, lawyers, and poets are free to conduct research at their discretion.
So in the elitist, pedantic spirit of the original rule I propose my own: Only qualified linguists may compose sentences. It’s every bit as full of shit as the original, but at least I got the modal right.
on September 21st, 2007 at 1:51 pm
N ote the twisted scopes of the presupposed negative in only and the square modal must. What they mean is something like
NECESSARY (Only x (Scientist x & Qualified x)) (DO_Research (x)
Which is ambiguous, of course. This is produced because modal auxiliaries like must are very tightly constrained positionally in English, while the negative quantifier only can oprionally precede any constituent containing the negative focus, so it can wind up outside the scope of the modal, like this sentence does, producing the wrong effect..
To fix the construction, you have to make the syntax resemble the semantics, so one solution is that the only works better if it’s isolated with the agent at the end of the sentence — well inside the scope of the square modal — a situation that simply applies Passive. If you passivize this clause, you gotta keep the agent.