In the version of the article I came across I found this sentence:
- Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context.
I changed "within" to "in." Here were the reasons I gave in explanation box on the edit page:
- "Within" is used when speaking of the ENTIRETY of an enclosed space some portion of which does or may contain something whose location is in question—it emphasizes spatial capacity; "in" is used to indicate the fact that a thing occupies some definite position that is part of an enclosed space—it indicates simple spatial occupation. A context does not have any spatial capacity, so "within" is not correct. I have therefore corrected it to "in."
Just Plain Bill did not accept this argument, and reverted the change. I think my argument was right. The entries on "within" and "in" in the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition, support my argument, even though the lexicographers were not careful, as I was, not to use any word that contained "in" to distinguish or define the two.
Here is the AHD's treatment of "within"; I have not reproduced the original italics, but have put in bold the material of particular interest:
- with·in (wĭth-ĭn, wĭth-) adv.
- 1. In or into the inner part; inside: "restaurants and wine houses jammed along the earthen streets ... banners flapping to announce the delights within" (Nicole Mones).
- 2. Inside the mind, heart, or soul; inwardly: the fear that lies within.
Notice that this is the definition of the adverb "within" as it acts as an adverb; notice also that in this use, the adverb always comes last. Here is the definition of "within" as a preposition:
- prep. 1. In the inner part or parts of; inside: the streets within the city; resentment seething within him.
- 2.a. Not exceeding the limits or extent of in distance or time: got within ten miles of home; stayed within earshot; arrived within two days.
- b. Not exceeding the fixed limits of; not beyond: lived within her income.
- c. In the scope or sphere of: acted within the law; within the medical profession.
- d. Used to indicate a range to be covered or an amount necessary before something can happen: The team has pulled to within three points and can tie the game with a field goal.
Notice that the expressions in bold all involve the theme of capacity, of a space large enough to hold many things, of a space or extent that encompasses lesser extents that agents can cover or that is established by a boundary that agents can pass only after they have traversed the whole extent of the encompassed field.
Here is the AHD's entry on the preposition "in":
- prep.
- 1.a. Within the limits, bounds, or area of: was hit in the face; born in the spring; a chair in the garden.
- b. From the outside to a point within; into: threw the letter in the wastebasket.
- 2. To or at a situation or condition of: was split in two; in debt; a woman in love.
- 3.a. Having the activity, occupation, or function of: a life in politics; the officer in command.
Notice that, although the preposition is defined as "within the limits, bounds, or area of," which is repetition of the theme of extent, you cannot substitute "within" for "in" in any of the examples—it makes no sense to say "he hit him within the face" or "he was born within the spring" or "the chair is within the garden." Why not? Well, it must be because the information the preposition gives us does not concern the extent of a dimension that an agent must cross or that contains a number of positions that a thing or event can occupy, but rather only the one and only position that the event or thing occupies. There are several paragraphs in this discussion, not within it.
A sentence has words in it, not within it. When you quote somebody's words, and they object that you quoted them out of context, not outside of context, they insist that you quote the words in context, not within context. That is because a definite spatial position is the issue, not the extent or range of a dimension.
I am aware that the use of "within" for "in" is catching on, but I think there are good reasons not to accept that usage, and to correct "within" to "in" when the context requires emphasis on position rather than range or extent. Consider these statements:
- I will be there in an hour.
- I will be there within the hour.
The first statement means that I will have arrived after sixty minutes have elapsed: the moment of elapse is the temporal position that my arrival will occupy; if the temporal position of my arrival is the moment forty-five minutes have elapsed, you are justified in say, "Wow! You got here fast!" The second means that I will arrive more or less just before the sixty minutes are about to elapse—that my arrival will be one of the many temporal positions that an hour can hold; if the temporal position of my arrival is the moment forty-five minutes have elapsed, all you are justified in saying is, "Now that you're here, let's get started."
Now consider these:
- The treasure is in the house.
- The treasure is within the house.
The first statement means that the treasure occupies one particular spatial position of the many positions bounded by the house; we know that this is what it means because in response to the person who made the statement you can ask, "Where is it exactly?" The second means that the treasure occupies some spatial position bounded by the house but that, the position being unknown, each of the house's bounded compartments must be searched to find it. We know that this is what the statement means because you cannot ask the same question; you can only say, "Where should we start looking?" Those bounded compartments, however, are in the house, not within it, because they take up and divide the space in the house; there is no range of undifferentiated space that one can traverse that is greater than the space the compartments occupy.
I think that, if you are in doubt as to whether "in" or "within" is correct, you must ask yourself whether, in context, the statement requires you to emphasize spatial position or spatial range.
I do of course admit that, in principle, the AHD could be wrong, and that my interpretation of the AHD could be wrong, but anyone who advances this claim will need to appeal to a dictionary of greater authority than the AHD (like the OED), and use counterexamples that show my examples not to be paradigmatic of the differences between the two prepositions. Until then, I submit that "within" must be changed to "in." Wordwright (talk) 00:22, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- The OED does in fact allow a figurative sense for "within" as "in the extent of something abstract" especially connoting "in or not beyond."
- Your example of the treasure in the house misses the mark. "In the house" need not mean "[occupying] one particular spatial position of the many positions bounded by the house". One could just as easily say, "it's in the house, and good luck finding it" without error of diction, grammar, or logic. Just plain Bill (talk) 01:03, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- @User:Just plain Bill
- I don't understand your citation from the OED—"in the extent of something abstract" is not intelligible, and I don't understand what is supposed to connote "in and not beyond." I'd appreciate it if you would provide a link.
- But I think you're straining here—you appeal to an allowable "figurative" sense without explaining how it is possible to use a preposition "figuratively," but even if you did, the figurative use of "within" has nothing to do with the basic distinction between "in" and "within." It's as though you argued that it is wrong to argue that there is a basic difference between atmosphere and air because the figurative expressions "I didn't like the atmosphere in there" and "There was something unpleasant in the air" are more or less equivalent.
- Your counterexample doesn't have any real force. The person who says, "It's in the house, and good luck finding it" is still informing the other person that the thing occupies a particular position—he does not inform the other that he doesn't know where it is, he is not insisting on the extent or range of space that the house encloses, and there could be any number of reasons for his wishing the other luck in finding it—the house could be messy, the thing might be hidden, and so on.
- And your observation still doesn't mean that there is no difference at all between "The treasure is in the house" and "The treasure is within the house"—you haven't shown that the two prepositions do not have different senses in general, nor have you shown that we cannot generate an infinite number of sentences in which to substitute "in" for "within" or vice versa results in a change of sense.
- But your counterexample does help in forcing me to distinguish the difference in the sense of the two prepositions from the different ways of conceiving the thing with which we use them. If you can conceive of an X as either a simple container without any emphasis on range or as a container whose range is of primary interest, then you will use "in" with the former conception and "within" with the latter. For example:
- The bogey is in view.
- The bogey is within view.
- In the first statement, I implicitly conceive my view as a field one portion of which the bogey now occupies; in the second, I conceive of my view as a field over any portion of which the bogey may range but with respect to that ranging I can now perform different types of visual acts like describing location, targeting, direction, and the like without losing sight of it. But necessarily the object must be large enough to admit of the two conceptions. You cannot say:
- The water is within the tub.
- The change is within my pocket.
- The diamond is within my hand.
- Sometimes even with things of vast extent it would be incorrect to emphasize that extent. It is wrong to say:
- Superman is flying within the sky.
- Moby Dick is the greatest creature within the sea.
- Jesus is one of the most influential individuals within history.
- The origins of language are lost within the mists of time.
- The solar system is within a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
- In all these instances we conceive of the thing contained as occupying a single (numerical) position among other positions that things occupy, even though we need not have any particular (fully identified) position in mind. To say that
- Paul is in the world, not of it
- is not to conceive of Paul as occupying one and only one definite spatial position, but only to conceive of him as at any time occupying some one spatial position. So to say that the treasure is in the house is to say only that it occupies one single numerical spatial position, and does not commit you to conceiving of the house as a container among whose range of space you will need to move in order to find that position.
- So my claim is that, if you use "within" with a noun that denotes a thing we cannot conceive as having a range or extent, you violate idiom. A context isn't a physical, but a figurative container, and as a figurative container, it doesn't contain any empty space that things it contains can range across. You have not shown that a context is something that we conceive as encompassing an indeterminate extent of "space" containing more space than items occupying that space and that in dealing with a context one can never know just what position among the other positions a word or phrase will occupy, so it is always possible to say, "Good lucking finding my words within context!" I do not think you can show that it is possible to conceive of a context in this fashion.
- So let me ask you simply and directly: is it your contention that "within context" is proper? And is your reason that the use is figurative, which the OED allows, because we conceive of context as a container with more space than occupants? Is it your claim that there is no difference at all in the meaning of the two prepositions? Even if you still think that I have not answered your counterexample, do you think that that one counterexample suffices to show that all the other idiomatic phrases I submitted as disallowing the substitution of "within" are wrong? That you can say, "I punched him within the face"? That you can say, "Sit within that chair?" That you can say, "The sun is high within the sky"?
- Most importantly, if you are ready to argue that it is possible to conceive of a context figuratively as a container containing vast extents of unoccupied space, can you argue that, with respect to the sentence in which the disputed "within" occurs, the relation of a thing to be identified to its context is that its spatial position has not been made determinate with respect to the vast extent of the context?
- I did not really have these distinctions all clearly in mind when reading "within context" struck me as wrong, but I do think it might help if you consider that my initial sense that it was wrong was not arbitrary. If you consult the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and do a search for "within context," and click "Chart," you will get these results:
More information SECTION, ALL ...
| SECTION | ALL | SPOKEN | FICTION | MAGAZINE | NEWSPAPER | ACADEMIC |
| FREQ | 16 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 12 |
| WORDS (M) | 577 | 116.7 | 111.8 | 117.4 | 113.0 | 111.4 |
| PER MIL | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.11 |
Close
- Frequency is the number of times the expression occurs in the collection of texts or corpus used as evidence. Words in the millions are the number of words in each corpus—so in the transcripts of spoken English there are 116.7 million words. So in spoken English "within context" occurred 2 times out of 116.7 million words, and thus constituted 0.03% of usage. Here is the evidence for the use of "in context":
More information SECTION, ALL ...
| SECTION | ALL | SPOKEN | FICTION | MAGAZINE | NEWSPAPER | ACADEMIC |
| FREQ | 1271 | 319 | 50 | 180 | 138 | 584 |
| WORDS (M) | 577 | 116.7 | 111.8 | 117.4 | 113.0 | 111.4 |
| PER MIL | 2.20 | 2.73 | 0.45 | 1.53 | 1.22 | 5.24 |
Close
- So "in context" occurs 319 times in the 116.7 million words of the corpus of spoken English, making up 2.20% of usage. That is more than a 150% difference.
- This statistical evidence does not support the claim that the two prepositions have a different sense, nor the claim that they cannot be substituted for one another without change of sense or offense against idiom, but it does show that overwhelmingly Americans use "in context" rather than "within context." Now, you may be British, but I rather doubt that the percentages would be different in BrE. You cannot use "within context" without offending against the majority of native English speakers' Sprachgefühl.
- But again, my main points are that the two prepositions have different senses, that they cannot be substituted for one another without change of meaning, and that when "within" is used as a preposition with a noun that we cannot in general or in context do not conceive as encompassing a range or extent, you violate sense and idiom. You have not addressed these points. I still maintain, then, that "within" should be corrected to "in." Don't you agree? Wordwright (talk) 05:38, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- Just checked the British National Corpus for evidence of use of "within context" and "in context" in British English. Here are the results:
- Your query "within context" returned 1 hit in 1 text (98,313,429 words [4,048 texts]; frequency: 0.01 instances per million words)
- Your query "in context" returned 246 hits in 151 different texts (98,313,429 words [4,048 texts]; frequency: 2.5 instances per million words)
- So "in context" is the collocation used by the overwhelming number of speakers of British English, so just in contrast to the sheer frequency of "in context" the use of "within context" must sound like a violation of some sort, if only at first a violation of "expectation," like hearing somebody say "the stripes and stars," instead of "the stars and stripes." But as it turns out, one can give good reasons for describing it as a violation of a more linguistically important sort. Wordwright (talk) 05:58, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
"Context" can absolutely be conceptualized as encompassing a range or extent, with an image schema resembling a container. It is not outside the realm of conjecture that such a container has room for more than its contents, and that its boundaries are fuzzy enough to admit gradations of membership, with some members more central than others.
Likewise, "Names can identify a class or category of things..." Classes or categories seldom if ever occupy points in conceptual or physical space. With that in view, it is entirely appropriate to say one fuzzy set lies within another fuzzy set, or outside it, or part way in/out. With that in mind, I consider many of the examples given in the above gallop to be tangential or orthogonal to what properly ought to be the core of a concise, focused argument.
The OED definition I mentioned is sense 9, and may be found in the lower left quadrant of p.3802 of the compact edition that usually sits on a shelf to the left (or east) of the fireplace here.
If it's a measure of Sprachgefühl you're after, then it would make sense to search the British National Corpus for the actual combination of words in question: "... within a given context". I think you will agree that the addition of an article and modifier changes the sense as well as the prosody of it.
For those who go "TL;DR" at the above, it may be summarized as "'tweren't broke, no need to fix it." Just plain Bill (talk) 13:51, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- @User:Just plain Bill You got me! I'm always ready to admit my errors, and I admit that, for whatever reason, I completely overlooked that "a given." But that "given" doesn't change the sense of the preposition, nor does it change the way we conceive of the thing it modifies: in the phrase "at any given time" all the "given" does is to emphasize that no matter the temporal moment you choose, the event or state of affairs under discussion will obtain; its presence does not indicate that "time" has a sense different from the one it has in the phrase "at any time," because in both phrases "time" means "particular temporal moment" and not "the domain of duration." As in any other given phrase, all "given" does when it modifies "context" is emphasize the particularity of that context—it doesn't require or allow conceiving the context as having an extent.
- And you evaded my question. We are talking about the act of giving a name to an object that does not identify it uniquely regardless of context but identifies it uniquely only in that restricted context, and you haven't shown that context in general can be conceptualized as an extent, nor that it can be conceptualized as an extent in the context of the phrase "in context" or "a given context." When you give a name to an individual in a "given" context, you are giving it to that individual so far as it just does occupy a position in that context; a context is the same sort of concrete but immaterial reality as a game; when we say that a player is in a game, we do not understand him to be occupying one spatial position in anything that is of great spatial extent. If I say, "In any given game, Kobe is likely to do something so spectacular you won't really know what happened," "given" does not change the sense of the word "game" or the way we conceive it.
- For instance, a dog whose real name is Morton, when hired to play a family's pet in a film, is given the name "Lassie," even though the dog is not a collie and the film is not part of the "Lassie" franchise. The context of the film is not conceptualized as a space whose extent encompasses a range of positions any one of which the actors can range across in calling the dog by its pretend-name "Lassie"; it is conceptualized only as the only framework against which "Lassie" denotes that particular dog, and no other, and only so long as the cameras are rolling; when the cameras stop, its trainer says, "Here, Morton!" At the beginning of a Shakespeare play is the list of the dramatis personae, and you see a line like "Ethelred, Duke of Moucerstershire," even though, in the play, only his wife calls him "Ethelred," and then only in their bedchambers or elsewhere in private; in public, like everybody else, she calls him "Moucerstershire." In each given context, his interlocutors use a name that uniquely designates him even though in each generation the eldest son has the same first name and title. The context isn't understood to have any leeway; one is in the context just as one is in the world, just as you and I are in a discussion.
- But I'm afraid you didn't keep your mind concentrated on your images. Can a container have fuzzy boundaries? Can a container have room for more than its contents—that is, the things that occupy its space? Are the contents of a container members of the container? If the boundaries of anything are fuzzy, doesn't that just mean that it isn't easy to tell what things are outside the boundaries and what things are inside them? Does that difficulty mean that there are grades of membership among the things that are definitely inside the boundaries? Does a thing at the center of a space have a greater degree of insideness in the container than a thing near the fuzzy boundaries, but definitely not in the band of fuzziness? I really can't think of any instances in which classes and categories do occupy physical space, even if they seldom do, but I'm a little bit puzzled as to why you think that they seldom occupy conceptual space—those infrequent occasions apart, what space do they occupy?
- I do agree that categories and classes can have fuzzy boundaries—I'm sure that photography is an art, but not sure that even the most elaborate and colorful graffiti is a work of art; I'm not sure whether numbers are real (in the same sense as a stone is real), or whether they can be said to exist, even though I am sure that there can be no real things that aren't numerable. I also agree that one fuzzy set can lie within another fuzzy set; in fact, I like talking about fuzzy sets—it makes me think of an image of a Penthouse pet, a woman smiling at you, her sheer teddy draped over her eighth-wonder-of-the-world breasts and down to her muff, her long legs cascading down to her feet covered by mules sporting a candy-cotton puff. But with that within mind, I don't agree that a fuzzy set is a container, nor do I agree that fuzzy sets, classes, and categories are contexts.
- I wish I had a compact OED; I wish I had a fireplace. I was hoping you had a link to some free complete OED online, because I no longer have one. Oh, well!
- But now, really, Billy boy! "Image schema"? "Quadrant"? "Prosody"? I'm sorry to have to say this, but it seems to me that, with the sudden shift within your diction, you're simply trying to show off. Can't be sure of course; all I can see is that you have contradicted me but haven't treated the disputed passage at all, so I'll just presume that, for reasons I cannot fathom, you've invested your intellectual pride in that "within," but you can't get a return on your investment through reason, and want to joust. And "TLDR" is just a way of spitting within somebody's face, and is meant to distract—it's different, of course, from leaping and leaping and not being able to reach, and then complaining of sour grapes, but still you're somewhat like the fox within that given fable. I'm glad you've given me the chance to think about this; it's been an enjoyable exercise! But I know that you dragons enjoy your slumber, so I'm sorry to have roused you. Wordwright (talk) 21:45, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- Maybe I didn't make it obvious enough for you that occupying a point in space and occupying a range or extent in space are two different things, whether the space is physical or metaphorical. Just plain Bill (talk) 12:50, 2 September 2018 (UTC)