a doubt about c

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Have you conducted a survey?

I would be surprised if many people actually didn't understand it. People
might find it unusual, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is unclear.

Speaking only for myself, when I first encountered Indian students using
it, I did think they were challenging the accuracy of what I said rather
than not understanding it. It didn't take long to clear up my
confusion, but the confusion was there.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Nobody wrote:
) On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:39:56 +0100, J. J. Farrell wrote:
)
)> It is not a normal usage outside "Indian" English, to the extent that
)> most speakers of other forms of English find it puzzling when they first
)> come across it.
)
) Have you conducted a survey?
)
) I would be surprised if many people actually didn't understand it. People
) might find it unusual, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is unclear.

Of course the meaning is clear. It's the connotation that is unclear.

'Doubt' is like 'Question', but with the *extra* connotation that the asker
suspects the distruth of what he is asking.

I would be surprised if most people do not read this connotation
into such questions, even after repeated occurrences. I sure do.

I have to conciously remind myself that the connotation isn't intended.

 

[Shao Miller]

Have you conducted a survey?

I would be surprised if many people actually didn't understand it. People
might find it unusual, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is unclear.

I've always understood the subject of "doubt" as being two-valued
whereas the subject of "question" being "any-valued." But that's just
my impression.

I remember when I first heard "doubt" in a similar context to this, I
silently wondered, "What was the claim you have a doubt about?" But a
second later I dismissed it as uncommon usage (for the places I've
lived) and assumed the speaker meant "concern." 'Twas puzzling and
unusual, and I am having a doubt about the speaker knowing of this
potential.

I haven't spoken to all English speakers, so really have no idea how
common such usage actually is. I think most people I know would agree
that it sounds like a quirk, but seems an easy difference to tolerate.

 

[Shao Miller]

Nobody wrote:
) On Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:39:56 +0100, J. J. Farrell wrote:
)
)> It is not a normal usage outside "Indian" English, to the extent that
)> most speakers of other forms of English find it puzzling when they first
)> come across it.
)
) Have you conducted a survey?
)
) I would be surprised if many people actually didn't understand it. People
) might find it unusual, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is unclear.

Of course the meaning is clear. It's the connotation that is unclear.

'Doubt' is like 'Question', but with the *extra* connotation that the asker
suspects the distruth of what he is asking.

I would be surprised if most people do not read this connotation
into such questions, even after repeated occurrences. I sure do.

Assuming someone's doubt is a question of true versus false, why
"distruth" and not "unknown truth value"?

If I have a doubt that you are generally a positive person, it might be
that I've seen some evidence that calls that into question... But if
the evidence were really convincing and I suspected you were not
generally a positive person, I wouldn't have a question... I might have
an agenda to call attention to this perceived evidence to others. But I
think that's a leap from "doubt".

 

[Shao Miller]

I've always understood the subject of "doubt" as being two-valued
whereas the subject of "question" being "any-valued." But that's just my
impression.

I remember when I first heard "doubt" in a similar context to this, I
silently wondered, "What was the claim you have a doubt about?" But a
second later I dismissed it as uncommon usage (for the places I've
lived) and assumed the speaker meant "concern." 'Twas puzzling and
unusual, and I am having a doubt about the speaker knowing of this
potential.

I haven't spoken to all English speakers, so really have no idea how
common such usage actually is. I think most people I know would agree
that it sounds like a quirk, but seems an easy difference to tolerate.

I just asked a fellow who I see on a regular basis about this, in
person, "When you use the word \"doubt,\" do you mean the same thing as
\"question?\"" He unhesitatingly responded, "Yes." He began to add
detail, but his wife interjected about "grammar" and so I didn't catch
it. Then he suggested that his experience with North Americans was that
some words and grammar were different than the British influence that he
believed was responsible for his intended meanings and usage.
Interesting... Though off-topic, of course.

 

[Seebs]

Have you conducted a survey?
No.

I would be surprised if many people actually didn't understand it. People
might find it unusual, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is unclear.

I dunno, I certainly got it wrong the first few times. "I have my doubts
about X" does not mean "I would like some questions answered", it means "I
think X looks ungood." So the first few times I saw someone say "I have
a doubt about C", I interpreted their posts as complaints, not requests for
information. And then they didn't even state what the actual complaint was...

The problem is that, in the English I learned, there's simply *no* connotation
of "doubt" which can be used in the sense of "a request for information which
does not imply distrust or dislike".

-s

 

[J. J. Farrell]

Have you conducted a survey?

No, but I remember my first coming across it, and I've observed many
speakers of several other English dialects first coming across it.
Depending on the context of how they first hit it, responses varied from
slight puzzlement over an odd usage to simply not understanding what was
being said.

I would be surprised if many people actually didn't understand it. People
might find it unusual, but that doesn't mean that the meaning is unclear.

I think that depends entirely on the context in which they first come
across it. In my case a brand new colleague came to my cube and said
"Hi, I have a doubt for you". I guessed at several different things he
could have meant, none of which was correct. I most suspected that he
was saying he didn't understand something he'd been told, perhaps where
to find something - but why would that be "for me"? I said "I'm sorry, I
don't understand" and he replied "I just have a little doubt" - that
headed me more in the right direction, but all confusion was removed by
another Indian English speaker popping his head over the cube wall and
saying "he means he has a question for you".

In other contexts it would be much more obvious - "can I ask you a
doubt" for example gives enough context, or "I have a doubt - what time
do we go to lunch?". I've never known anyone come across this usage for
the first time who wasn't a little taken aback and puzzled by it, even
if the context gave them enough information to make the meaning clear.

 

[Michael Press]

On 6/15/2011 10:03 AM, James Kuyper wrote:
[... "Doubt" vs "Question" -- Indian-English ...]

That's quite probably how that usage came into existence, but the point
is, it's still incorrect usage anywhere except Indian English, as far as
I know. The number of Indians who speak Indian English as a second
language is immense, but it's the native language of only a tiny
fraction of them. They need to be aware that this is a dialect-specific
usage,

And, being an implementation-specific extension to "Standard English", is OT
for clc.

and one that is likely to confuse people who don't speak that
dialect. It should be avoided in contexts, such as this one, where most
of the participants don't speak that dialect.

However, I believe that it's been seen enough in this group that us
"regulars" understand the usage, at least in the context of clc.

That said, "it couldn't hurt" to point out the possible confusion of such
usage, and encourage the posters to use "question" instead.

Not to mention (well actually I do mention it) that
among native English speakers `doubt' and `question'
carry distinct overtones, so that confusing them
decreases the resolution of sentences using those words.

 

[James Kuyper]

On 06/19/2011 03:41 AM, Michael Press wrote:
....

Not to mention (well actually I do mention it) that
among native English speakers `doubt' and `question'
carry distinct overtones, so that confusing them
decreases the resolution of sentences using those words.

That's not true of the native speakers of the Indian dialect of English.
Sources differ as to their number, but it seems to be somewhat less than
250,000, a rather small fraction of the number of speakers of that language.

 

[Shao Miller]

I just asked a fellow who I see on a regular basis about this, in
person, "When you use the word \"doubt,\" do you mean the same thing as
\"question?\"" He unhesitatingly responded, "Yes." He began to add
detail, but his wife interjected about "grammar" and so I didn't catch
it. Then he suggested that his experience with North Americans was that
some words and grammar were different than the British influence that he
believed was responsible for his intended meanings and usage.
Interesting... Though off-topic, of course.

Seeing as how we've just seen "doubt" used again, I'll share that:

I had another, lengthier conversation with another couple I see on a
regular basis (and who happen to know the first couple that I
doubted^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hquestioned) and they suggested that they understood
the subject of a "doubt" to be two-valued versus the subject of a
"question" being many-valued. This wasn't the same exchange as the
first fellow I asked, since he seemed pretty sure that using the terms
interchangeably was all right.

The example one of them gave was, "I have a doubt that you gave me
enough cash money." They also suggested that they (the two of them) use
the word to mean something like "disbelief," and "do not agree."

They also suggested that from time to time, when they lack the
vocabulary (she wasn't lacking "vocabulary") to express something in
English, they'll substitute a similar word, even though they can tell
that it doesn't belong. I'm quite certain I'd do precisely the same
thing; association.

So as far as "surveying" goes, I have asked two couples (who know each
other) and have gotten two different answers.

I wonder if a "bedrock doubt" is about something "fundamental" or
"foundational" or the "basis" of something... For whatever it's worth,
Google translates "I have got two bedrock doubts" into some text which
translates back as "I have found the suspect."