An astronaut is landing on the moon. For the first time, it won't be an American

jeffw@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 105 points –
An astronaut is landing on the moon. For the first time, it won't be an American
usatoday.com
74

You are viewing a single comment

It says "an astronaut is landing on the moon" implying there is only one on this mission.

Furthermore, is implies it's imminent. Which is also not true.

It doesn't. Present Continuous is used for future plans.

If I say "my brother is traveling to France," that doesn't mean "at some point in the future, my brother will travel to France."

At least I've never heard anyone use "is" followed by an action that way.

It's very clunky in its usage. Which isn't good English, but neither is the title, so I'm over it.

Perhaps you're not a native speaker, but it absolutely is used that way in real life. My brother is travelling to France in August, for example.

So you mean if you add a qualifier, that changes the meaning?

Are you saying that as he goes to France in August, you would never say "my brother is traveling to France?"

And you still haven't answered me about The Wizard of Oz and Fargo.

Because I do not care for weird analogies.

You added an example, I made it make clearer sense for you, someone who had never heard of Present Continuous for plans in their lives, apparently.

I'm waking up early tomorrow, so I'm done.

So you wouldn't say "my brother is traveling to France" while he's on the plane? What do you say? "My brother is will be were traveling to France?"

And you claimed you could infer an author's intent from a title. Therefore you can tell me that you knew for a fact before seeing or hearing about the movie Fargo just from the title alone that only a few seconds of the film took place in Fargo. Correct or not?

It doesn't, it refers to one but can be of many. A person is attending a football match for the first time today. It doesn't mean no one else is.

No. The sentence you posted implies a football match was never before attended by any person.

If you want to say one of many, you should say Some person/someone.

Or you can qualify the person. E.g. A non-american astronaut will be landing on the moon for the first time.

Nope, because you know football matches have been attended by people. Ignoring basic facts doesn't make your understand correct, it's silly.

Yes, so we are talking about a sentence in the headline where we don't have extra context, yet you make an sentence where it is clear the sentence is stupid based on outside context and argue it should be interpreted the other way around because otherwise we know it is stupid. Amazing logic.

Just because I can deduce what you actually meant does not mean the sentence is correct.

You have kept your eyes and ears shut your whole life?

I for one don't know how many astronauts are being sent to the moon when. And if most people do, no point writing this article, is there?

We know people have been to the moon before.

So what? No one is saying the sentence says or implies for the first time. It just implies one person will be going this time.

So you know the context. It doesn't imply that, just a faulty assumption/logical fallacy.

That is like me saying there is one pope and your takeaway is there is at least one. Yes, the sentence does not explicitly state there is only one, but it strongly implies it, just like the title.

It doesn't state it, and it's not really important if it's one of a few on a crew (as you would expect).

That's like someone boasting he rode the Tour de France and then claiming it is not important he rode it on a motorbike. There is a big difference between another nation reaching the moon and a foreigner hitching a ride with the Americans.

PS: No matter how much you try to move the goal post, I said "implies" from the start and you said it doesn't. I ain't falling for "it does not state it".

2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...