Bruce,
     I thought immediately of the Brando character in On The Waterfront: 
"I could have been a contender." It might be that Caesar was never 
crowned, but could have been, if only.....  What I know of history would 
make that unlikely. but the syntax makes it possible.
     Maybe Caesar is the name of a highly regarded Poodle. He could have 
been crowned were it not for that unfortunate interaction with the judge.
     I think we do harm when we call a sentence a "complete thought." 
Without the context, it's hard to conjecture, and that context would 
certainly include the surrounding sentences.
    I agree. Ambiguity enters at all levels, including syntax.

Craig

On 1/13/2011 6:32 AM, Bruce Despain wrote:
> Sometimes it might be appropriate to point out some of the ambiguities of syntactic structure that come with language, that the interpreter needs to sort though and resolve. Usually this is done so automatically and unconsiously that we forget that such a thing must be happening. Consider as an example a simple sentence
> containing a (past) modal auxiliary together with its (perfect) participle from Reed&  Kellogg. It will become obvious, I think, how diagramming by their method can be quite superficial.
>
> "Cæsar could have been crowned."
>
> I think the  most  obvious  interpretation would paraphrase as the past possibility of the occurrence of the event:
>
> 1) "It could have been that Cæsar was crowned (by his soldiers)."
>
> The modal might take on a more subjective and hypothetical mode so that we have just the possible judgement of the author as to the past event:
>
> 2) "I could say that Cæsar was crowned (by his soldiers)."
>
> Then the participle might be interpreted not as an event in the passive voice, but a more static state of affairs — past possibility of a state of affairs:
>
> 3) "It could have been that Cæsar was crowned." (He was king.)
>
> The last logical combination of the double ambiguity of modal and participle would be the possible judgement as to the past state of affairs:
>
> 4) "I could say that Cæsar was crowned." (He was king.)
>
> The construction of the language allows all of these interpretations to be present, and yet from the greater context of the utterance the mind handles this as a very fuzzy concept until more context is available. Often the interpretation is set up beforehand with backgrounding so that the interpreter immediately knows, for example, whether the author's judgement is involved or an objective statement is being asserted.  Of course, at any time the interpreter could be following a primrose path ending in humor or confusion.
>
> I would find it nearly impossible to talk about these things with anyone without there first being a appropriate set of terms for what is going on grammatically.
>
> Bruce

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