Picking a nit (was Re: something else)

[dennis guy grace]

At 12:24 PM 9/30/96 -0500, Kihe Blackeagle (the Dreamsinger Bard) wrote:
>
>> I like judged tourneys, double elims, single elims, pas d'armes, bear
>> pits, king of the hills, snow balls, umm... I just like tourneys.
>> Kein
>>  p.s. I like melees, too.
>
>Ah, redundancy!
>
>(Ya already mentioned "Snow balls": I've often heard these described as 
>"snowball melee tournaments")
>
>Semantics & definitions, part o' me stock-in-trade ...
>
><HUMOR:off>

With all due respect, milord, saying "I like melees" does not repeat the
sense of "I like snowball tourneys."  Even if you call it a "snowball melee
tournament," a snowball tourney is decidedly distinct from the broader
category "melee."  It is possible to like one and dislike the other.  While
I enjoy melee combat, I find it far more enjoyable in well-trained,
well-organized units than in the catch-as-catch can of a snowball.  Not that
I don't find the occasional snow-ball tourney enjoyable.  Snowballs shake up
the battlefield status quo and require rapid formulation of strategies.
Held too often, however, I find snowball tourneys lose their charm.

As for the semantics of HE Sir Kein's statements, "snowballs" fits into the
general category "tourneys" as well [as Kihe Blackeagle notes] as "melees."
Claiming to enjoy an item that happens to exist in two distinct sets is not,
in and of itself, tantamount to claiming to enjoy both sets.  Sir Kein's
postscript, therefore, was not redundant.


Yours in Armoured and Semantic Service

Sir Lyonel Oliver Grace
________________________________
Dennis G. Grace
Postmodern Medievalist
Assistant Instructor
Division of Rhetoric and Composition
University of Texas at Austin

For every wight that lovede chivalrye
And wolde, his thankes, han a passant name,
Hath preyed that he myghte been of that game.
                --Jeff Chaucer (obviously describing the SCA)