if at all = ?

[coolfool_sin]

While I'm reading The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain by Kenneth O. Morgan, a kind of odd phrase runs into me, which is as follows:

1. (page 286, Chapter 6 The stuarts) Towering above the Stuart age were the two decades of civil war, revolution, and republican experiment which out to have changed fundamentally the course of English history, but which did so, if at all, very elusively.

I guess it may have something to do with

2. (page 62, Chapter 2 The Anglo-Saxon Period) Such a system could hardly be stable: when a king grew sick, poor, or mean his retinue would collapse, and his heirs, if they survived at all, would become sub-kings or followers of a new lord.

What's more, I bump into it once more when looking up Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009:

3. Under entry Five Good Emperors: the ancient Roman imperial succession of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, who presided over the most majestic days of the Roman Empire. It was not a bloodline; Nerva was raised to the principate by the assassins of Domitian, and the others were successively adopted heirs, each only distantly related to his predecessor if at all.

I wonder that the authors may deliberately omit some words in order to make their respective articles neat and simple, and whether or not there's someone here who'd give me a hand to restore the completely original sentences.

Thanks a lot.

[Clanad]

Pardon me for being dense, but I'm not sure what it is that you're asking. I can elucidate upon only one phrase common to the three entries, that being "if at all", and I don't see the connections with your request "to restore the completely original sentences".

The phrase recited above is an artifice used regularly in descriptive tomes such as those you've referenced... but by no means substituted for "omitted" verbiage, in my opinion...

I'm sure it wil alll become very clear when someone with an eye for the obvious interprets your request.

[heathfield]

I don't see any problem. Everything makes sense. What the author has done is to concisely state what he means to say. Additional words might produce a more appealing style, but in terms of meaning they'd be superfluous.

[mallam]

Well Clanad, whatever else I have an eye for, I certainly have an eye for the obvious. It seems to be making me a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind on here, but I am in good company, some of it even perhaps binocular, as you may be, but of course I wouldn�t know, would I?

Heath, if you think everything makes sense, you must have mentally supplied the missing word in 1: ... which [turned?] out to have changed fundamentally the course of English history...

Cool, what I think you are on about is ellipsis. For the relevant sense here, the COD is pathetic, to my surprise, but the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary has

noun [C or U] plural ellipses SPECIALIZED
when words are left out of a sentence but the sentence can still be understood:
An example of ellipsis is "What percentage was left?" "Twenty" (= 20 per cent).

But you are not on about it very consistently: your ex 2 is not even elliptical (if they survived at all.) What is more it couldn�t be elliptical here even if it wanted to be: try leaving out �they survived�!

But �if at all� in 1 is elliptical for �if they changed the course of English history at all�, or � if they did so at all�, and �if at all� in 3 is elliptical for �if related to his predecessor at all�, or �if he was related to his predecessor at all�, which alternatives show that there can be degrees of ellipsis!

How right you are that authors, and indeed speakers, omit some words in order to make their utterances neat and simple! If there was no ellipsis at all, they would be very tedious indeed, would they not? My last question tag, for example, would have to be �would they not be very tedious indeed?� Even if only a certain degree of ellipsis was possible, it would have to be �would they not be�!

See what Im getting at? And what all users of language are getting at?

[mallam]

Did I give you enough of a hand to �restore the completely original sentences�?

Bit of a fool�s errand, isn�t it?

[ann_h]

Towering above the Stuart age were the two decades of civil war, revolution, and republican experiment which out to have changed fundamentally the course of English history, but which did so, if at all, very elusively.

"which OUGHT to have" makes more sense as there is the comparison/contrast between "fundamentally" "if at all" and "elusively"

To say "turned out to have changed fundamentally" and then say "if at all" is self-contradiction

You think so, at all ? :o)

[mallam]

I do indeed think so, at all, ann, and normally I would have hastened to tell you so, but I went to bed early (always a bad idea) to cry myself to sleep over my godbrother�s death, which for all my efforts to stress how long postponed it had been, and how productively (http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Body-and-Soul/Q uestion722355.html ) is hitting me very hard. No amount of the drugs whose wonders I was celebrating earlier ( http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Body-and-Soul/Q uestion721761.html ), nor of Co-Codamol and Tramadol can compete with this.

So my posts here are not by any means the only ones that are in ruins tonight.

Congratulations on your detective work. My own dereliction in that respect is I am afraid evidence of my lifelong conviction of the truth of the dictum that history is bunk, and indecent haste to get to the RHS of cool�s equation if at all = ?!

[heathfield]

Yes, I did observe that there was a missing word, Mallam, but I assumed on the basis of probability that it had been left out by Coolfool rather than by the original author.

[coolfool_sin]

I appreciate your making the effort to help me see the whole pictures.

Yes, it IS an ellipsis.

Since English isn�t my mother tongue, I, having no eye for it, or them, sometimes, feel confused.

After mulling it over and over again, I figure

What you should say, if at all, is...

for example, is supposed to mean

What you should say (you don�t need to but if you need to say anything at all) is...

As a result, my questions would, if I get them right, become

1. The civil war changed the course of history in subtle ways, normally it shouldn�t have, but if it did at all.

2. The heirs may become sub-kings, normally most of them wouldn�t survive, but if they did at all.

3. They only distantly related to his predecessor, probably they might not, but if they did at all.

What do you think?

Once again, thanks so much.

[Clanad]

I have the sneaking suspicion, heathfield that we've been kneecapped, but the weapon used was a Nerfball... I for one, couldn't make head nor tails of the observation by mallam , nor the supposed objective conclusion reached by coolfool. In mallam's case we have received, unsolicited, an example of an entry for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels) and, would win first prize, hands down. The cake, which he would take, consists of offerings of a directionally challenged flibbertigibbet replete with pleonasm yet with an abundance of prolix. An impetuosity providng not a scintilla of warmth and illuminating nothing...
In the prose submitted by the questioner, (fittingly sobriqueted coolfool) conclusions are reached that defy explanation or understanding. At any rate, an apparent exercise of self-induced calumnies, amongst which reside not a single ellipsis... Oh, well...

[heathfield]

Agree wholeheartedly, Clanad When I read Mallam's answers throughout AB I keep thinking along the lines of of my own above answer relating to ''saying what you mean in the least possible number of words''. (Was it Jonathan Swift who said that? It's one of the accolades for Milton's 'Paradise Lost' at any rate.).

[swedeheart]

This thread is giving me a headache ;-)

coolfool could it be that you are simply asking what it means? How the expression is used? You seem to be on to the right idea but I'm not one hundred percent sure what you're saying (sorry) so I've done some re-writing too. I've taken enormous liberties with the text, for the purpose of making the meaning more clear that way. But I'm a Swede I am! �so I may not have got it right. But here goes:

[�] One would think that two decades of civil war, revolution, and republican experiment would completely change the course of English history. And indeed it may have changed the course of English history. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. We can't really say. In fact, we almost suspect that it didn't. But, we can't really say. What we can say is that IF it did change the course of English history, it did so in ways which are not so easily determined or described.

[�] When a king grew sick, poor, or mean his retinue would collapse. His heirs might not survive that kind of situation. But IF they did survive, they would become sub-kings or followers of a new lord.

The third paragraph isn't totally clear. Either the author isn't certain about who was or wasn't related to whom in exactly what way, or he/she is saying "Look, there were five of'em, we needn't really go into tedious detail for every single one of them here do we�" (But nevermind that. What's important is that) [�] none of the Five Good Emperors succeeded to the throne by birth. None of them was the son of an emperor. Some of them were /MAY have been related to the previous emperor, but the ones that were (or POSSIBLY were) related to the previous emperor weren't closely related to him, at any rate.

[mallam]

Heath, Im just back from beyond the grave, and the first thing I see is your post:
> I assumed on the basis of probability that it (sc. the word) had been left out by Coolfool rather than by the original author.

I was never far enough gone to assume anything else. Could anyone be? It was my idle surmise as to what it might have been that was so stupid.

At least I hazarded (lit) a guess, and made it explicit. What had yours been?

[mallam]

H and Clanad, the pair of you have given me a nasty turn in the middle of an already horrible time, and if you had had the kindness or even deceny you could have shecked out the links I gave above.

There as here I was simply giving conscientious and painstaking answers, admittedly sometimes in spades, to questioners� problems, real or wind-up variety, and the former at least is supposed to be the purpose of this site.

I knew H was a stroppy b, but I had got you wrong, Clanad, as you will see if you look back over my previous dealings with you.

It is obvious by now that you are right about us all having been nerfballed, but don�t blame it on me.

If you don�t like the suit of my answer you are welcome to try putting it in clubs. I do not promise to give you a mark sheet of it. What would be the point if you are incapable of seeing that it really does need to be in spades, and that btw it trumps even the nerfball?

A simpls apology for gratuitous offensiveness against someone who has shown neither of you any will do.

[mallam]

BTW in your feeble attempt to parody my prolixity, you say �replete with pleonasm yet with an abundance of prolix�. (You don�t even use the abstract noun �prolixity�, I will charitably assume this is out of some stylistic flibbertigibbetry of your own).

Your level of understanding is so minimal that you don�t see that the pleonasm and prolixity are a reductio ad absurdum of what language would be like WITHOUT ellipsis. Duh!

I was not even parodying my own prolixity in this case, which anyone conversant with stylistic conventions would be able to see i often do do for comic effect, and even anyone NOT conversant with ditto can see I often do by way of explicitly poking fun at myself. (Thus conferring upon your sneers a redundancy of their own.)

Where�s the fun in you two drears?

[Clanad]

Previous dealings, mallam? I recall none. So I did a word search thinking you may have reversed your pen name.... but no... came up with the same zerosity... Strange, no?

[mallam]

I misposted my answer to this on the thread to which I referred in it. Here is it is,but is will probably be deleted as a duplication:

So did I do a word search just now, inspired by the great cleverness of your witticism about my palindromic pen name....Apparently you can't even do a search right:

983 hits for my pen name (but I didnt confuse the site seqrch by going all palindromic), though that of course will only feed your malice about my prolixity, rather than alert you to the possibility that for a despicable newbie I may have been making a respectable number of conscientious and well-meaning attempts to help questioners.

And the second of those hits was for an exchange with you! ( http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Arts-and-Litera ture/Question709271.html ).

It so happens that this very search result for the criteria you claim to have been using to zero effect (I will eschew any further perusal of the search results as my nerves are too shot by your uncouth attacks) shows that we did in fact sail fairly close to the wind on that occasion. I remember I suspected you of being the pompous one, glibly laying down the law about half-understood web gleanings, but it seems I kept those suspicions very close to my chest, and we seemed to be having a perfectly good-humoured exchange.

[mallam]

Well obvioiusly it can't be that easy to befeat the embargo on double-posting, but here goes for the rest of that post:

You even seemed to be expressing UNsarcastic appreciation for my attempts to put the record straight THERE. But what you will not have seen then (because the thread was dead when I next posted to it, in the ridiculous way that threads usually are on this site because of the �zerosity� of its software), and still will not have seen, because you were too arrogant to see your search results, never mind read them, is that I thanked you for your apparently UNsarcastic appreciation for my attempts in the following post, which I will copy for you since you don�t follow links:

Hello again, Clanad. Always good to chew the fat with you. Didnt see your little envoi as I was being snatched back from the jaws of death in hospital - the upper jaw being a medical emergency, and the lower jaw being the rigours of imprisonment without leave of appeal by control freaks in the DISorganized chaos of the NHS, with its non-existent systems and lines of communication, death dances of junior doctors and harassed pharmacists, and dashing young nurses being dashed into the ground by the dashing - all of them at odds with one another and the patient, not to mention his multiple medications, which have to be confiscated and thrown to the four winds to see where they fall.

So thanks for the honorific title, and the thanks (or apology, since I am intrigued to see that you use a word which may be either, as opposed to arigato etc, as used by the hoi polloi of anecdotal Japonaiserie!)

[Clanad]

Look, mallam... any perceived antagonism on my part by you was feigned... It was just a good opportunity, as was the previous exchange, to engage in linguistic one-upmanship... I assure you, no ill-intent was planned nor seriously engaged... lexically purfleistic entirely. I viewed it as long distance, pixellated kinesics. No engagement in contumaciousness aforethought. More of a somewhat unburnished girandole, if you will. (Probably a result of primogeniture, as friends have previously suggested).

You reference ill health in this post as well as theone I overlooked in a search. I sincerely hope that you are n the mend...

Heal well...

[mallam]

I see, Clanad. The "perceived antagonism" was feigned!That's all right then, isn't it?

That seems to be a cry of "feign"-ites. I will give it a guarded welcome.

But on the assumption that the Clanad expression "any perceived antagonism on my part by you" translates into English as "the antagonism on my part perceived by you", Im bound to say - am I not? - that anyone who did not perceive any antagonism on your part would have had to be dead, buried, and decomposed.

As for PERceiving it as feigned, that is as impossible for me as if I were already in that condition. However I will accept the challenge of attempting to CONceive that it may have been feigned.

On the other hand no one-upmanship, feigned or otherwise, can be either perceived or conceived in this engagement, unless you know which way is up. You may perceive that in whatever way you like.

I give you humble and hearty thanks for introducing me to the word 'purfleistic'. What does it mean? Is it pixillated or kinetic (again on the assumption that you mean 'pixillated' and not 'pixellated')?

Let us burnish our girandoles better than this!

I do understand that primogeniture is a terrible affliction (as a fellow sufferer), and I do appreciate your kind wishes for some sort of recovery of the minimalistic level of health to which I can realistically aspire.

[Clanad]

I'm sure, that by this time, we've overwhelmed coolfool's e-mail inbox with yet another notification of our exchange.

Purfle: to ornament the border or edges of (Source: Merriam-Webster's

...and no... indeed, I meant Pixellated: i.e., In computer graphics, pixellation (or pixelation in American English) is an effect caused by displaying a bitmap or a section of a bitmap at such a large size that individual pixels, small single-colored square display elements that comprise the bitmap, are visible to the eye. ...

Probably a weak attempt at humor on my part... it seemed appropriate at the moment. Perhaps the results of bending the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Again, following winds and blue skies!