Re: ISP vs "newsgroup server provider":

Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:34:11 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> said:
>
>> Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> > On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:36:52 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
>> > <kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> said:
>
>> >> Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> > [...]
>
>> >> Again, an ISP provides "Internet service", not "Internet
>> >> services".
>
>> > That's like saying a garden-tool store sells only one garden
>> > tool, or a stamp collection contains only one stamp. We don't
>> > say "stamps collection", but that's what we mean when we say
>> > "stamp collection".
>
>> If you really think that those are parallel, I dont know what to
>> say.
>
> They are parallel when I interpret your "Again, an ISP provides
> 'Internet service', not 'Internet services'" as an argument against
> thinking of any source that supplies Internet services as an
> Internet service provider. If you didn't mean that, I don't know
> what your point was.

I did mean that, and I still don't see how they are parallel. I agree
that the phrase "Internet service provider" could have been coined to
mean one who provides one or more services over the internet, just as
"telephone company" could have meant a company that sells telephones.
But it wasn't, so I don't see how bringing up those examples helps
your point. If I were to say that my phone company was Toshiba
because that's what the writing on the phone says, I suspect that you,
like most native speakers, would say that I was using the phrase
incorrectly. If I were to imply that believing that "phone company"
refers to the company that provides phone service branded you as a
"technogeek" wedded to "technical jargon", you'd probably be at least
faintly amused.

>> > When some of us say "Internet service provider", we mean
>> > "Internet services provider", but we don't say it that way,
>> > because it's not idiomatic.
>
>> That's what I meant when I said that if people think about it that
>> way, then they've reanalyzed what the phrase means.
>
> "Reanalyzed" is a pretty fancy word for perceiving a word to
> have a different meaning from the one intended, which may be
> what a large part of language change is based upon.

Reanalysis is more specific than that. It's specifically interpreting
an unfamiliar word or phrase based on its constituent parts or form in
a way that makes logical sense but happens to be different from what
the speaker intended. Someone unfamiliar with the term who interprets
"Internet Service Provider" as a provider of Internet services rather
than as a provider of Internet connectivity as a service has done
exactly that. They've heard about "Internet services" and they hear
"Internet Service Provider" and assume that there is a relationship.
It makes perfect sense, but it happens to not be what was intended.
Until, of course, that becomes the way that most people use the
phrase, at which point we sigh and declare the original meaning
skunked.

Reanalysis often happens at the morphological level. When "pease" was
reanalyzed as a plural, "pea" was created as a back-formed singular.
When "a napron" was reanalyzed as "an apron", a new word was born.
When "hamburger" was reanalyzed as containing "-burger" as a suffix,
"cheeseburger" and "turkeyburger" became possible.

> In looking at dictionary definitions of "analyze", I see no basis
> for calling simple misperception of meaning analysis.

As I said above, it's not the misperception, it's the logical
conclusion.

>> I suspect that it must be confusing for such people, as
>> they will typically deal with many providers of "Internet
>> services".
>
> So they'll have many different Internet service providers. What's
> confusing about that?

What's confusing is that I haven't heard people imply that they "have"
many different ISPs. People who think that they have "an ISP" but
deal with many "Internet Service Providers" would seem to have a
conundrum.

> But we should keep in mind the basis for this subthread. It
> arose from someone's telling me that newsgroups are not
> provided by an Internet service provider but by a "newsgroup
> server provider". (That was clumsy wording, by the way. A
> newsgroup-server provider would be something that provided
> newsgroup servers.)

Agreed. It should be a "newsgroup service provider" or just "Usenet
service provider".

> My reaction was that a newsgroup provider--which I took to be the
> intended meaning--would be one of the services provided by an
> Internet service provider, not something distinct from it. It's a
> big stretch from there to considering whether or not to call
> Amazon.com an Internet service provider.

Why? I don't see the difference between one such service and the
other. Is it just that your ISP, unlike, say, AOL or CompuServe,
provided the one but not the other?

>> Let me be sure that I understand you, though: Active-News, as a
>> provider of newsgroups (and nothing else); Google, as a provider of
>> search;
>
> "Google" subsumes "Google Groups", and the latter does more
> than provide search: as you know, it also provides e-mail
> service.

Google provides many services. But what I was asking was whether
Google, solely as a provider of web search (pick your favorite other
search engine if you can't divorce them in your mind), a service
commonly provided by many ISPs, was therefore an ISP.

[snip]

>> I'll buy that people may have reanalyzed the name to mean
>> "services" and think of their ISP as providing services, as (and
>> because) most of them now do. But I haven't heard people use "ISP"
>> to refer to other service providers (even of the services they rely
>> on their ISP for) and I suspect that when people start going
>> elsewhere for the "fundamental" services, as many do these days to
>> Google for news and to Yahoo or Gmail for e-mail, that for them the
>> scope of what an ISP provides will shrink back to its original
>> meaning. The ISP will again be like the phone company, the cable
>> company, the gas company, or the mail service--the one that hooks
>> you up.
>
> The gas company provides gas, the phone company provides
> communication by telephone, and the cable company provides cable
> television and broadband Internet access (plus some other things I
> don't subscribe to). It would do me no good to connect to them if
> they didn't provide something useful.

Exactly. The phone company provides the ability to connect your phone
to someone else's phone. The ISP provides the ability to connect your
computer to someone else's computer over the Internet. If the ISP
provided nothing else, it would still be useful, as you can get all of
those other services you consider part of the ISP's job from other
parties, just as you get all of the services you don't consider part
of the ISP's job from other parties.

>
>> >> > Keep in mind that I'm discussing this topic from the point of
>> >> > view of a Joe or Jane Sixpack who has no need to be concerned
>> >> > with the jargon of technogeeks.
>
>> >> If this is the case, then Jane and Joe have reanalyzed what the
>> >> phrase means.
>
>> > Anyone who thinks English terms have only one meaning is living
>> > in a fool's paradise.
>
>> You certainly couldn't be talking about me. Besides the fact that
>> you've been reading my articles for too long, the very setence
>> you're replying to assumes that words can have more than one
>> meaning.
>
> You made what Jane and Joe do sound like something reprehensible.
> From that it would follow that new meanings resulting from their
> "reanalysis" should be rejected.

I find this somewhat amusing. You called them "Jane and Joe Sixpack"
and called the established technical terminology they are attempting
to use "the jargon of technogeeks". I used a perfectly neutral phrase
which you happened to be unfamiliar with, and jumped to the conclusion
that *I* was accusing them of doing "something reprehensible" and that
their interpretation should be rejected.

Actually, I can't quite decide whether you're being disingenuous
about not knowing what "reanalysis" means. You didn't mention it when
you participated in a 1996 thread entitled "reanalyzed acronyms", nor
did it upset you in 2002:

On 18 Sep 2002 10:59:45 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenb...@xxxxxxxxxx> said:

...

> I suspect that it might be due to a reanalysis or contraction of
> "away", as in "away down south in Dixie", becoming "way down
> south" or "way up north" or "way down yonder in the paw paw
> patch".

Your suspicion seems to be borne out by the online _OED_, where it
says of "way"'s etymology: "[Aphetic f. AWAY. Cf. G. weg similarly
used.]"

http://tinyurl.com/dwckw
<URL:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/
msg/36f965263f44e470>

>> >> Certainly at one point "ISP" meant "The company that allowed me
>> >> to get on the net". I don't believe that I've ever heard
>> >> anybody consider Google or Amazon as an ISP, even though they
>> >> manifestly provide "services".
>
> I gave an example of an alt.usage.english poster who thought
> Dejanews was her Internet service provider (see more below).

Yes. In a reply to the message in which I made the assertion. I now
have heard of one such.

> The way statistics works, one occurrence can be taken to imply the
> existence of a substantial number of others.

Or it can be indicative of an isolated anomaly. One interesting test
would be to see how such people respond to being told that "Actually,
computer people use ISP to mean the company that hooks you up to the
network. It's like your telephone service." If they say "Silly me.
I'm not very familiar with technical things" and then start using it
in the old-fashioned way, then I'd say that it was idiosyncratic and
not indicative of any broad change in meaning. If, on the other hand,
they say "Who cares what technogeek jargon says? That's not the way
real people use it", then it is.

>> > One name for a picture tube is "kinescope". In the early days of
>> > television, coast-to-coast distribution of shows was done by making
>> > a recording from the face of a kinescope. The result was first
>> > called a kinescope recording. People began calling the shows
>> > themselves kinescopes. Technogeeks laughed at that "error", but the
>> > general public found the usage convenient and were content to
>> > continue its use. In the contexts where it was used, it was correct
>> > terminology.
>>
>> Sure. That's why what you say is plausible. I'd still like to see
>> some evidence that it is, in fact, true for a substantial portion of
>> the population.
>
> I'm not sure what the antecedent of your "it" that is, in fact, true
> is.

That "Internet Service Provider" is taken to mean a provider of
Internet services.

> If you mean by "it" the fact that "kinescope" was used for a
> kinescope recording, the fact that the meaning found its way into
> dictionaries--both British and American--should be evidence enough
> to show that it had substantial use. But the kinescope recording,
> so far as I know, is only a matter of history since the advent of
> microwave relays and video recorders. In looking at Google hits on
> "kinescope", I get the impression that people who use the word are
> talking about what used to be.

I believe you. That's why I said "sure".

>> >> I don't believe that I've ever heard anybody consider Google or
>> >> Amazon as an ISP, even though they manifestly provide "services".
>
> You already said that, and I responded to it. See above.

I already acknowledged that you responded to it. See above. :-)

>> > A number of years ago there was an alt.usage.english newcomer who
>> > posted from Dejanews, the forerunner of Google Groups. She was
>> > asking questions about the mechanics of posting. I mentioned a
>> > time or two that she should consider Dejanews a temporary means
>> > and that she should plan to sign up with a regular Internet
>> > Service Provider. She commented at one point, "But I thought
>> > Dejanews *was* my Internet Service Provider". I would expect to
>> > find that there are lots of people who feel the same way.
>
>> And I suspect otherwise, although the population is big enough that
>> "lots" isn't a very high bar. Now all we have to do is figure out
>> a way of finding out which of us is correct.
>
> In this case, "correct" itself would be a relative term, but it
> probably isn't the right word to convey your intended thought. You
> may better have said "which of us can find the most evidence to
> support his position".

Why? That isn't what I meant. You suspect that there are lots of
such people; I suspect that there aren't. One or the other of us is
correct. The first question isn't who can best support his position,
it's how could we go about establishing the answer.

> Your task would seem more difficult than mine, because it's easy to
> show that there are at least a couple of examples to support my
> position, but I can't imagine how you would find even one example to
> show that my position has no validity at all.

This is one of those cases in which "The plural of 'anecdote' is not
'data'" applies and in which an absence of evidence can be taken as
evidence of absence. Unless you want to contend that people who use
the phrase in your sense are systematically very unlikely to leave
evidence in places we can look, then if a substantial fraction of the
population uses it that way, we should expect to find evidence of it.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |"It makes you wonder if there is
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |anything to astrology after all."
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |
|"Oh, there is," said Susan.
kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx |"Delusion, wishful thinking and
(650)857-7572 |gullibility."

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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