Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:51:59.784Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Temporal modifiers and the Rogers-Aliant dispute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

E. Graham Katz  and
Benjamin Shaer
E. Graham Katz
Affiliation:
CACI International
Benjamin Shaer
Affiliation:
Carleton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, we discuss a recent dispute between two Canadian companies, Rogers and Aliant, which went before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. This involved an apparently ambiguous provision in an agreement between these companies, the interpretation of which was widely seen to hinge on the placement of a single comma in this provision, although the dispute was ultimately resolved by reference to the unambiguous French version of this provision. We provide a syntactic and semantic analysis of the linguistic facts of the dispute, rejecting Aliant’s argument (and the CRTC’s original conclusion) that the placement of the comma provided robust evidence of the intended meaning of the disputed provision and showing how two temporal expressions in this provision, thereafter and prior, contribute to the meaning advanced by Rogers. We also demonstrate the essential equivalence of this meaning to that of the French version of the agreement.

Résumé

Résumé

Dans cet article, nous discutons d’un différend récent entre deux compagnies canadiennes, Rogers et Aliant, différend qui est allé devant le Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes. Au cœur du litige se trouvait une provision apparemment ambiguë dans une entente entre les deux compagnies, provision dont l’interprétation semblait, à l’avis de plusieurs, dépendre de la présence d’une simple virgule. En dernier lieu, le litige a été résolu en ayant recours à la version française de cette provision, considérée comme non ambiguë. Nous fournissons une analyse syntactique et sémantique des faits linguistiques du litige, et rejetons l’argument d’Aliant (et la conclusion initiale du CRTC) voulant que le placement de la virgule constituait une preuve forte du sens voulu de la provision contestée; de plus nous démontrons de quelle façon les deux expressions temporelles de la provision, thereafter et prior, contribuent au sens tel que compris par Rogers. Nous démontrons aussi l’équivalence essentielle de ce sens à celui de la version française de l’entente.

Keywords

Discourse Representation Theoryorphanstemporal modifierthereafterpriorThéorie de la représentation du discoursorphelinsmodificateur temporelthereafterprior
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 58 , Issue 1: Temporal and modal dimensions of legal discourses , March 2013 , pp. 85 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Adams, Kenneth. 2006. “Notice” or “prior notice”? Available at: www.adamsdrafting.com/2006/06/05/notice-or-prior-notice/.Google Scholar
Adams, Kenneth. 2007. Behind the scenes of the comma dispute. Globe and Mail, August 28. Available at: www.adamsdrafting.com/downloads/g-and-m-082807.pdf.Google Scholar
Allott, Nicholas and Shaer, Benjamin. 2013. Some linguistic properties of legal notices. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 58: XXX–YYY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen, Ian. 2006. A comma valued at $888, 000. International Herald Tribune, 25 October. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/business/worldbusiness/25iht-comma.3279193.html.nocanadianspringchicken.blogspot.ca/2012/10/the-comma-that-costs-1-million-dollars.html Google Scholar
Cooney, Mark. 2011. Style is substance: Collected cases showing why it matters. Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 14: 1–52.Google Scholar
Coulthard, Malcolm and Johnson, Alison. 2007. Introduction to forensic linguistics. London/New York: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet D. and Inoue, Atsu. 2000. Garden-path reanalysis: Attach (Anyway) and Revision as Last Resort. In Cross-linguistic perspectives on language processing, ed. Vincenzi, Marica de and Lombardi, Vincenzo, 21–61. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geurts, Bart and Beaver, David I.. 2011. Discourse Representation Theory. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2011), ed. Zalta, Edward N.. Available at: plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/discourse-representation-theory/.Google Scholar
Goldfarb, Neal. 2012a. On Garner on Posner on Scalia and Garner. Available at: lawnlinguistics. com/2012/09/09/on-garner-on-posner-on-scalia-garner/.Google Scholar
Goldfarb, Neal. 2012b. Last antecedents, series qualifiers, and psycholing[ui]stics. Available at: lawnlinguistics.com/2012/10/08/last-antecedents-series-qualifiers-and-psycholingstics/.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2009. Parenthetical adverbials: The radical orphanage approach. Reprinted in Dislocated elements in discourse: Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic perspectives, ed. Shaer, Benjamin, Cook, Philippa, Frey, Werner, and Maienborn, Claudia, 331–347. New York: Routledge [1991].Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane, Shaer, Benjamin, and Frey, Werner. 2009. Postscript: Problems and solutions for orphan analyses. In Dislocated elements in discourse: Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic perspectives, ed. Shaer, Benjamin, Cook, Philippa, Frey, Werner, and Maienborn, Claudia, 348–365. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hall, Geoff R. 2008. Canadian contractual interpretation law. 2nd ed. Markham: LexisNexis Canada.Google Scholar
Hardegree. 1994. Symbolic logic: A first course. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans and Reyle, Uwe. 1993. From discourse to logic: Introduction to modeltheoretic semantics of natural language, formal logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans, Genabith, Josef van, and Reyle, Uwe. 2011. Discourse Representation Theory. In Handbook of philosophical logic, vol. 15, ed. Gabbay, Dov M. and Guenthner, Franz, 125–394. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
LeClercq, Teresa. 1996. Doctrine of the Last Antecedent: The mystifying morass of ambiguous modifiers. Legal Writing 2: 81–112.Google Scholar
Robertson, Grant and Crosariol, Beppi. 2006. Grammarians take heed of telecomma dispute. Globe and Mail, 29 December. Available at: www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/grammarians-take-heed-of-telecomma-dispute/article1112257/.Google Scholar
Scalia, Antonin and Garner, Bryan A.. 2012. Reading law: The interpretation of legal texts. St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West.Google Scholar
Shaer, Benjamin and Katz, E. Graham. 2008. Temporal modifiers and the Rogers-Aliant dispute. Paper presented at the Law and Society Association/Canadian Law and Society Association meeting, Montreal, 27 May.Google Scholar
Shaer, Benjamin. 2011. The Last Antecedent Rule, “orphans”, and the pragmatics of legal interpretation. Paper presented to the School of Linguistics and Language Studies and the Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, December 8.Google Scholar
Shaer, Benjamin. 2012. Bilingualism in Canadian contract law: The Rogers-Aliant dispute. Rechtsgeleerd Magazijn Themis 173:300-307.Google Scholar
Shaer, Benjamin. 2013. Toward a cognitive science of legal interpretation. In Law and language: Current legal issues, vol. 15, ed. Freeman, Michael and Smith, Fiona, 259–291. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Solan, Lawrence. 1993. The language of judges. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Wilson, Deirdre. 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sullivan, Ruth. 2008.Google Scholar
Sullivan on the construction of statutes. 5th ed. Markham: LexisNexis.Google Scholar
Sutherland, Jabez Gridley. 1891. Statutes and statutory construction. 1st ed. Chicago: Callaghan.Google Scholar
Torbert, Preston M. 2011. Contract drafting: A Socratic manifesto. Scribes Journal of Writing 14: 93–119.Google Scholar

Legal materials cited

Anderson v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, 75 Cal. Rptr. 739 (2nd Dist. 1969).Google Scholar
Barrie Public Utilities v. Canadian Cable Television Assn., [2003] 1 S.C.R. 476, 2003 SCC 28.Google Scholar
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. 2006. Telecom Decision CRTC 2006-45. Available at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2006/dt2006--45.htm.Google Scholar
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. 2007. Telecom Decision CRTC 2006-45. Available at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2006/dt2006--45.htm Google Scholar
Criminal Code (Canada), R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46.Google Scholar
Criminal Code (Canada), R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46.Google Scholar
Fire Prevention Act, 1992, Statutes of Saskatchewan, F-15.001.Google Scholar
Mawson Hotels Inc. v. Solie [1997] S.J. No. 333.Google Scholar
National Fire Code of Canada, 1990.Google Scholar
R. v. Burrows, [1995] O.J. No. 1820.Google Scholar