Re: ``wait and see''

In article <426A2876.90B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Ron Hardin <rhhardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen
>``Just you wait and see.''
>http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/The-sayings-of-Premier-Joh/2005/04/20/1113854243533.html

>Making the case that this is hendiadys, a favorite pastime of mine,

OED Online has "wait and see" (with indirect question or ellipsis of
this) 'to await the course of events' as an idiom, with cites back to
1719 (Robinson Crusoe). both the verbs "wait" and "see" seem to be
fixed in the idiomatic construction; "stay and see" and "wait and find
out" are possible, but only as ordinary coordinations. (these
judgments are subtle, however.)

it can occur without the "and" in telegraphic contexts (like
headlines: "Bucks fans should just wait, see"
http://www.jsonline.com/sports/buck/oct00/hofmcol28102700.asp), but
otherwise requires it. ok, there seem to be some people who allow V+V
here, as in
----
We have to all wait see what happens, however if they did base it on
not ... If goes the way people are saying and we have to wait see, then the
real ...
www.a4uforum.co.uk/archive/topic/26383-1.html
-----
here, "wait see" is treated much like "go/come V" (the "quasi-serial
verb", or QSV, construction of english). it's not my english, but i can see
how this would happen.

>the question
>comes up what the future tense might be

> They will wait and see
> They will wait and will see

for me, absolutely only the first, although once again the other
version is possible as an ordinary coordination.

>The past tense seems to make sense, but a little awkwardly, as if
>something were amiss,

> They waited and saw

ah, this is a cool fact. (i agree that the example is odd as an
instance of the WAIT AND SEE idiom.) this looks like the "inflection
condition" that has been observed for the QSV construction and for the
TRY AND V construction. the inflection condition requires the
construction to occur only in the base-form (in imperatives, with
modals, with infinitival TO, etc.) or in finite forms identical to the
base form. if so, we'd predict that
When they have to, they wait and see.
is a lot better than
When she has to, she waits and sees.

i'm not entirely sure of my own judgments here. it's possible that
what's at work here is not the inflection condition, but some slightly
different one. maybe there are people who simply require that the
idiom be in the base form; all of the OED's examples are in the base
form.

in any case, the past participle form sounds truly rotten to me:
??When they've had to, they've waited and seen.
while the present participle form isn't so bad for me:
?Right now, they're waiting and seeing.

>Hendiadys ought to show up as the inability to construct tenses, one
>of the verbs being actually non-finite.

well, this is something one needs to discover; it doesn't follow from
putting the label "hendiadys" on some data. certainly, TRY AND V is
perfectly happy in finite forms that are identical to the base form:
When I have the time, I always try and calibrate things exactly.
just as the QSV construction is:
When I have the time, I go visit all my friends.
but the Vmotion AND V construction ("Go and see who's at the door") --
certainly something that is frequently labeled hendiadys -- isn't
subject to the inflection condition at all:
When she has the time, she goes and visits all her friends.
When I had the time, I wen't and visited all my friends.

>I don't know if ``wait to see'' is the correct original or not.

as to "original": questions of historical origin can be surprisingly
difficult to answer. in this case, examples like "wait, and see..."
might well have served as the source of the more tightly bound "wait
and see..." but i don't have evidence on the matter.

as to "correct": the implication seems to be that WAIT AND SEE is
somehow "incorrect". actually, usage manuals often object to TRY AND
V and also to Vmotion AND V on the grounds that they involve a
replacement of "correct" TO by "incorrect" AND; aside from their
(possibly false, and certainly unproven) hypothesis about historical
origins, these manuals seem to be taking the position that AND
signifies *only* something like logical conjunction; any other
use/meaning for AND is, *by definition*, illegitimate. but this
claim about the semantics of AND is just raw unsubstantiated
assertion. we're talking about a word of a particular language here,
not a connective in a system of logic, and words of a particular
language mean what speakers use them to mean. english AND has plenty
of uses that have meanings other than (or in addition to) logical
conjunction.

arnold






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