From: scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie)
Subject: Re: Hopefully (was: More importantly, ...)
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 16:24:29 GMT

Did we have 'mercifully' as a parallel to 'hopefully'?

(1) Mercifully, the war is over.

The on-line here says this ought to mean full of mercy, or compassionately.
I can assign only one meaning to (1), and have no problems or discomfort
in doing it. It's like the 'thankfully' case we had. Maybe people out there
don't like 'mercifully' either.

David Tate I think pointed out the presupposition of *consensus* in
'hopefully' when contrasting it with 'I hope'. I think this is very
important. There is a huge difference between 'I hope it will rain'
and 'hopefully it will rain' - and indeed with 'we hope it will rain'.
'It is to be hoped' sounds too formal, like the scientific passive.

----------------------------------------------------------------MORE

Jim Quinn, in American Tongue and Cheek, gets into this word.

He notes the usage is modern, post-1965 basically. Bernstein, author
of Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage (1977) [sic] says a decade
earlier he objected, but had changed his mind. Quinn quotes Bernstein
quoting Bruce Bohle, usage editor of American Heritage dictionary,
whose usage panel accepted our use of 'hopefully' in decreasing numbers:
1968--44%; 1970--42%; 1975--37%. So approval fell, yet "realistically"
says Bohle "I suppose it is here". Quinn is delighted to see the usage
editor of the AHD saying is unrealistically opposed to the word,
and increasingly so.

They were commenting on "hopefully, the war will soon be ended". 

I looked at Harpers usage book in the shop yesterday and had to laugh out
loud at the unbelievable vehemence landed on this usage. Quinn quotes
similar horror -

"the most horrible usage of our time" "this is the one that makes me
physically ill" "I... will fight it till I die" "odious" "illiterate"

and so on.

Of course, the word is used by nice, intelligent people. See the OED.

Quinn:

"The intention is to intimidate by intemperate l;anguage, and the basic rule
seems to be that intimidation grows more severe as it increasingly becomes
a substitute for argument of any kind"

[Well, I think this newsgroup would show Quinn that people can hold
to sensible arguments about grammatical constructions in their opposition
to 'hopefully'. Even though I would disagree with them about the basic
reasons for language change and other things, the arguments have been here,
not mere tossing of 'odious'.]

Those who make money from 'pop grammar' columns in newspapers, however,
and who are not here to answer back :-), are perhaps worthy of Quinn's
characterisation "mindless, arrogant, eager to humiliate anyone not in
on the latest secret of good usage... the pop grammarians are themselves
the creators of fads and vogue words. Rather than the fads of usage and
slang, which at least sometimes enrich the language,they create fads of
anti-usage, with no purpose but allowing the faddist to look down on
the standard speech of his neighbors, his country, even of the
whole English-speaking world." (p126)

He does, elsewhere, quite justify this blast. Not so with hopefully
itself, but with words decried as new perversions which have been
around for centuries/decades. Hopefully, a new usage, cannot be
defended with appeal to precedent. 

The argument against 'hopeully' is that the language is going to hell
in a handbasket and all means at our disposal ought to be ranged
full square against the abominations of change. Or something like that!
This is the argument given here, really, that it introduces a new
sub-construction of sentence adverb and is messing the language up.
As Quinn notes, the usage is here to stay, so why complain? He cites
a Paul Robinson, who says "They know that certain causes are lost...
'Hopefully' is just such a cause, and the linguistic conservative
realizes his historical function [of slowing change] ... to the bitter
end. If nothing else, he distracts the forces of change from launching
a premature assault on some other hapless word or phrase." This,
despite his opinion that "its incorrect usage is now so
common that onbly a fool would expect to recover its original meaning".

Robinson's theory is language change is that it produces incoherence,
to produce non-language as the years pass. Anti-evolution. Soon now
we'll be talking in grunts. Maybe he thinks the languages of Europe
are incoherent versions of their ancestor(s). One might suppose
that the only plausible outcome of language change has been to
produce our common human abilities from the primate grunts, not
vice versa. A riot of invention is not linguistic mass murder, but
a baby boom.

Quinn then claims mercifully, clearly, apparently, evidently,
fortunately, happily, presumably and luckily are parallels to
hopefully which are acceptable, and if they are, then
hopefullly should be too. we;ve been through this, but I wanted
to include his list and claim.

I think his defense of 'hopefully' is rather weak --- but 
not as weak as the attacks he cites.

This group presented much better arguments on both sides - though I
damned, after all this 'ink', if I can remember half of what
was said.

-- 
James M. Scobbie: Dept of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150, USA
                  scobbie@csli.stanford.edu
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang