A kind of linguistics problem

[Keith Arkell]

I was chatting with a couple of friends in Paignton today and I posed the following question:

Consider an imaginary exchange between The Mad Hatter and Alice:

Mad Hatter: 'All head injuries should be ignored'.

Alice: 'Even the trivial ones?'

Mad Hatter: 'No head injury is too trivial to be ignored'.

After pondering for no more than a few seconds, my friends were adamant that the message is the common sense one that even trivial head injuries should be attended to. I, however, believe that the Mad Hatter is giving very bad advice and that his second sentence is saying that there is no head injury which breaks the rule (that all head injuries should be ignored).

Who is right - my friends or me? At the time I politely backed down as they are far better qualified than me in linguistics (appeal to authority!) but I went away feeling that I am right but won't be able to convince them there and then.

I should mention that I added the first 2 statements later, as a tool to help imagine what might have led to the 3rd statement, which is the topic of the debate.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Interesting question, Keith. I have heard that used as an example before. Lots of answers to your questions here:

https://english.stackexchange.com/quest ... -to-ignore

Essentially about unintended second readings of the meaning of that sentence.

[Keith Arkell]

Thanks for responding, Christopher. Your refs are well worth a read.

It looks like this kind of thing doesn't interest the forumites very much, although I would expect Jack to put his oar in. However, he is away in Kingston playing a gruelling 2 Classical games of chess per day!

In fact the sentence does of course mean ignore all head injuries (irrespective of how trivial they are).

When I first asked ChatGPT it got it wrong and said the sentence means 'attend to all head injuries however trivial'. But then when I referred it to the 'Wason Verbal Illusion' it actually admitted that it had got it wrong initially.

I wonder if ChatGPT is cautious about giving bad advice, and so it therefore deliberately got it wrong when I first posed the question to it? I mean maybe it was 'afraid' to be seen to be advising people to ignore head injuries?

Anyway apologies if this kind of thing is boring to most people.

[IM Jack Rudd]

You have asked me this question before, and I agree with your interpretation of it.

[Keith Arkell]

That’s what you start doing when you get old.