Ardith Hinton to Anton Shepelev:

AH> In my experience, formal speeches often begin with
AH> phrases like:
AH>
AH>
AH>     I have the honour of reporting that [blah blah]
AH>     I have the honour of presenting [blah blah]
AH>
AH>                         or
AH>
AH>     It is my honour to report that [blah blah]
AH>     I am honoured to present [blah blah]

And they do.

AH> If the authors of these reports made an error by trying
AH> to put two grammatical constructions together, I don't
AH> see it as particularly serious...

I wonder why it is an error.  A good old prescriptivist
explanation would satisfy me, for prescriptivists consider
language an embodiment of logical rules, whereas
descriptivist think rules are but crude formulations for
fuzzy volatile tendencies in language.

AH> but I wonder who is so sure they're right (or wants us
AH> to think they are) that they find it necessary to add
AH> "of course" to lend weight to their argument.
AH>
AH>             WRT politics it behooves us to be on the
AH> alert for slanted writing, and WRT this excerpt I notice
AH> that the author hasn't specified what his or her
AH> objection is to the wording in the committee reports or
AH> why it "should" be xxx rather than yyy.

When aksked about the difference of "honor" from "right",
"courage", "permission", and "privilege", he replied:

>Possibly because all those verbs are descriptive, stating
>ability or permission to report (picture theory of
>language, Wittgenstein's TLP), while "honor" is part of the
>sentence that is Speech Act per se ?

AH> Yes, I have the courage to share my thoughts in the E_T
AH> echo when I see that somebody out there wants to learn
AH> more about my native language.

And I thank you therefor.  Observe it cannot be "the courage
of sharing", for courage is a prerequisite for the ability
to share.

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