Date:    Mon, 18 May 1998 10:11:45 -0400
<br>From:    Larry Horn <laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU>
<br>Subject: Re: "Is it raining out?"
<br>
<br>At 10:33 AM -0500 5/16/98, Gerald Cohen wrote:
<br>>  A 5/14/98 ads-l message asked:
<br>>
<br>>>Is it due to regional differences that when asking about the weather some
<br>>>say,"is it raining out?" and others simply, "is it raining?"?  why include
<br>>>the "out"?  it's not raining in.
<br>>
<br>>     ----The "out" here possibly originated in sentences of the type "Is it
<br>>nice out?"  (where "out" = "outside" is justifiably used).   Possible
<br>>answer (with transference of "out" from the preceding question):  "No, it's
<br>>raining out." (where "out" is unnecessary). Then the latter sentence could
<br>>be turned into a question: "Is it raining out?"
<br>>
<br>>     In the arcana of general-linguistic theory is a "Law of Least Effort,"
<br>>according to which  speakers use only the minimal effort necessary to get
<br>>their point across.  This so-called law is contradicted by "out" in "Is it
<br>>raining out?"
<br>>
<br>>--Gerald Cohen
<br>>
<br>As any study of the workings of Zipf's Law (the Principle of Least Effort
<br>in its linguistic applications) is careful to observe--including those of
<br>H. Paul, G. K. Zipf, A. Martinet, J. Haiman, and I like to think my own
<br>work in several papers and a book I've written since 1978--this principle
<br>does not operate in a vacuum and indeed is counterbalanced by other
<br>important functional principles, including iconicity (see Haiman),
<br>expressivity (see Henri Frei [1928] on La Grammaire des Fautes), a
<br>sufficiency principle establishing a lower bound on informative content
<br>(see Horn), and the conversational desiderata relating to information
<br>packaging, which I think are relevant here.  As Jerry suggests, the normal
<br>use of "It's raining out" is as a response to a question, although the
<br>neutral query here would have been not "Is is nice out?" but more likely
<br>"What's it like out?"  The "out" in the response is destressed; the
<br>variable for which a value is supplied is not "It's raining/sunny in
<br>[location] X" but with "It's X out."
<br>
<br>
<br>Larry
<br>