{"id":429298,"date":"2010-03-15T10:23:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T14:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2184"},"modified":"2010-03-15T10:23:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T14:23:46","slug":"%e2%80%a6-but-not-limited-to%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/429298","title":{"rendered":"“\u2026 but not limited to\u2026”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was recently reported<\/a> that Ray McBerry<\/a>, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, sent a message to his supporters reading in part:<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, I have been personally accused of, but not limited to, the following list of absurdities: that I attempted to have an affair with my former campaign manager\u2026 when she was fired for spending unacceptable amounts of time at the Capitol in lobbying efforts during our campaign; that I somehow \u201cstole\u201d sole custody of my son years ago from his mother, even though she tested positive for meth use in a court-ordered screening after she had been living outside our home for nearly a year; that I have had some sort of sexual or sexually improper relationship with underaged girls; that I am no longer allowed to teach in the state of Georgia, despite the fact that I retain my teaching certificate to this very day; and now that I am somehow unpatriotic because, as a Georgian who cherishes the constitutional Republic given to us by our Founding Fathers and wishes to see it restored, I choose to salute the Georgia flag and the original Betsy Ross American flag instead of the current federal flag which represents the present unconstitutional leviathan in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

This being Language Log rather than Political Scandal Log, my interest is the use of “but not limited to” with the syntactic force of “among other things”.<\/p>\n

Such cases abandon the requirement that limited<\/em> should find a syntactic partner earlier in the sentence:<\/p>\n

Anomalies may be found during, but not limited to, the review, test, analysis, compilation, or use of software products or applicable documentation.<\/span>
\nWhat Customers will Experience: Issue will affect all services which would normally be accessible for this server which may be, but not limited to; HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP and ASP.<\/span>
\nThis category consists of but not limited to handgun, rifle, and shotgun ammunition; cartridges and shells of various caliber, gauge, size and weight.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same sort of thing happens, even more commonly, with the fuller phrase “including but not limited to”:<\/p>\n

The user acknowledges and confirms Q-FM\u2019s indemnity to, including but not limited to, indirect, direct, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages arising from the use of or inability to use the Q-FM site.<\/span>
\nThe Company makes no representation, warranties, guarantees, and\/or conditions: as to the accuracy, reliability, quality, relevancy, and\/or timeliness of any content on the Site; that the Site will be completely operational and\/or error-free; that any error(s) in the Site will be corrected; that the Site will be free from including, but not limited to, viruses, hackers and\/or any other malicious security threats; and, that any communication between you and the Site will be secure.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you’re used to seeing language like this in contracts, it may not be obvious to you that a new construction has developed.\u00a0 Perhaps it will help clarify things to simplify them:<\/p>\n

The user confirms Q-FM’s indemnity to including indirect damages.<\/span>
\nThe Company makes no representation that the site will be free from including viruses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Compare<\/p>\n

Global Early Warning System for Major Animal Diseases, including Zoonoses (GLEWS).<\/span>
\nPolice seized 40 weapons, including assault rifles and handguns, in a Thursday evening raid of 287 Hickory Street in the Township of Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

Functionally, “(including) but not limited to” serves to indicate that a following list is not necessarily complete.\u00a0 Its original syntactic structure involves apposition with a preceding noun phrase. But for people who use it all the time — mainly, I suppose, lawyers — it loses syntactic integration with its preceding context.<\/p>\n

[Update — to clarify the political context, Mr. McBerry is one of a number of candidates for governor in the Republican primary, with current poll numbers in the low single digits. He’s also the president of the Georgia chapter of the League of the South<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was recently reported that Ray McBerry, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, sent a message to his supporters reading in part: In recent weeks, I have been personally accused of, but not limited to, the following list of absurdities: that I attempted to have an affair with my former campaign manager\u2026 when she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}