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Article: Falling short ; The ambiguity of `needs to be'; The Word
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- July 19, 2009
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Last week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia
Sotomayor were as bland as the pundits had predicted. But one news
report did offer a bit of linguistic titillation. NPR's Ari Shapiro,
commenting on Sotomayer's opening remarks, said, "I don't think she
went out on a limb {hellip} The statement was much shorter than it
needed to be."
Did he mean that the statement should have been longer, or just
that it could have been longer? I had never noticed this potential
ambiguity in "need to be," but it was real: I had to listen to
several more sentences before I concluded that the second meaning
was the intended one.
A quick online survey suggested the reason for my confusion.
"It's ...