Timeline for "She pulled back her fingers a second before they were sliced off." Does she still have all of her fingers?
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| Apr 26, 2018 at 23:50 | comment | added | psosuna | @jpaugh It could very well be -- but that's not what we can gather out of what is being said. I also am not saying that what I'm saying is 100% factual, either; it could easily be that the fingers get cut off anyway. The thing I'm saying is that, if you speak of an action as a point in time, and another second preventative action as a separate point in time, and the preventative action happens before the first action, the first action gets negated as a result of the impossibility of the sequence. | |
| Apr 26, 2018 at 18:20 | comment | added | jpaugh | @psouna If you wish to interpret the sentence strictly, based solely on what is explicit, would it not mean that she moved her fingers some distance before something else happened to them, namely, getting cut off? There's no explicit mention in this statement that she moved them far enough, or even that the cutting was bound to a specific location. Perhaps the cutting device was portable, and attached to her hand the entire time. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 18:40 | comment | added | psosuna | @KevinFegan I really doubt that. That would be reading too far into it. As Tuffy's excellent answer above indicates, there is a (strongly implied and likely true) sense of prevention of an action with the usage of before in this case. | |
| Apr 24, 2018 at 8:17 | comment | added | Kevin Fegan | I agree that there is a strong inference that she avoided injury, but it is not at all clear. Suppose her fingers were originally in a position that they would be completely (or perhaps mostly) sliced off. At the last moment, "She pulled back her fingers a second before they were sliced off". Pulling her fingers back does not insure or indicate that she didn't suffer any injury in the process ... perhaps half of each finger was sliced off. | |
| Apr 23, 2018 at 18:42 | history | answered | psosuna | CC BY-SA 3.0 |