Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 23:03:31 -0700

From: Rudy Troike RTROIKE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU

Subject: Re: "Beg the question": NYT 2-fer



Jesse,

Thanks for adding the latest quotes (an interesting shortening of

quotations -- any time-depth of cites ( citations ) on that?: I ask only

because it has lately troubled me in formal contexts).

Howsomever, I think the examples are perhaps ambiguously open to

the first interpretation I would automatically assign to them: viz, "IGNORES

the question", i.e., presupposes an understanding or awareness of what the

questioned item is, thus leaving it unexamined or unquestioned, through

failure to raise it as an issue or term to be questioned. In this sense, I

do not find this a new meaning, but one that has been around quite a while.



--Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)