There is no question that you will not misunderstand this sentence

Question

The MacMillan Dictionary has the following definition for the phrase 'there is no question that':

used for saying that something is definitely true

It gives the example:

There is no question that she has a great voice.

In other words: It is definitely true that she has a great voice.

Therefore it appears that the interpretation of:

There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

must be:

It is definitely true that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

Yet it seems that the author of this sentence actually means that boringest does not belong to the grammar of standard English. Here is the paragraph in which the sentence is located:

A corpus is “… a body of texts put together in a principled way, often for the purposes of linguistic research.” (Johansson 1991: 3). Computer technology means that modern corpora are large and easy to manipulate, thus lending themselves well to frequency studies of vocabulary and, to a lesser extent (Granger 2002: 21), grammar. The assumption is that there is a relationship between how frequent a construction is attested and its status in the language. Common forms and structures will be fully grammatical, rarer items dubious. For example, -ing adjectives such as alarming, gratifying, mocking form comparatives and superlatives through periphrasis not morphology (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan, 1999: 523), hence more/most alarming instead of *alarminger/est. Frequency data confirm this rule. The only exception found in the British National Corpus is this one occurrence of boringest: ‘…it’s always the boringest people, I’ve never seen any of them smile, laugh, talk…’. There is not enough evidence to suggest that boringest is a competing form to the standard most boring. In the concordance line quoted, the speaker may want to highlight how dull these people are by contrasting his/her own interesting personality. The adoption of the marked form boringest shows individuality and an unconventional streak, distancing the speaker from the people being denigrated. But this is the domain of stylistics, not grammar. There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

(Grammaticality Judgment Tests: Trial by Error, by Wayne Rimmer)

My conclusions:

1. I have misunderstood the paragraph, and the author does indeed believe that boringest is grammatical.

2. The author has been guilty of a misnegation error and should have written There is no question that boringest does not belong to the grammar of standard English.

3. 'There is no question that...' can mean both (definitely is / definitely is not), and needs the context to disambiguate it.

My question: Which of the three conclusions is the most convincing?

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EDIT: Thank you for all the high quality answers, and to @tchrist for offering the bounty to attract them.

Answer 1

The answer is 1:

I have misunderstood the paragraph, and the author does indeed believe that boringest is grammatical.

The statements to the contrary (2 and 3) rely on inferences from a reading of the rest of the paragraph where the author believes strictly in the rules he lays out. However, in examining the paragraph there is plenty of room for the overall paragraph and the final sentence, as stated, to be consistent with one another. The author does not believe that strict rules are the only basis of grammaticality; the author does not believe frequency is an assessment of grammaticality. I will offer a paragraph-level reading and then a paper-level reading to show how the author's statement is consistent with his immediate meaning and his general approach.

Paragraph-level reading

The first four sentences introduce the use of a corpus in linguistic research. Sentence 2 states the ease of using digital corpora for studying vocabulary frequency and grammar. Sentence 3 sets up an assumption that some users of corpora make - there is a relationship between the frequency of a construction and linguistic status. Sentence 4 elaborates on that logic: common means "fully grammatical," and rarity marks it as dubious:

A corpus is “… a body of texts put together in a principled way, often for the purposes of linguistic research.” (Johansson 1991: 3). Computer technology means that modern corpora are large and easy to manipulate, thus lending themselves well to frequency studies of vocabulary and, to a lesser extent (Granger 2002: 21), grammar. The assumption is that there is a relationship between how frequent a construction is attested and its status in the language. Common forms and structures will be fully grammatical, rarer items dubious.

Sentence 3 and 4 are both working on an assumption that frequency should be used to judge grammaticality. However, nothing identifies this as the author's own assumption; instead, the author uses language that distances himself from that assumption: "the assumption is" following two sentences sourced respectively to two other authors, Johansson and Granger.

What follows is an example of this assumption at work. The first sentence states a grammatical tendency relating to the formation of comparatives and superlatives through periphrasis (e.g. more alarming) and not morphology (e.g. (x)alarminger). The second sentence compares this rule to corpus frequency. The third sentence adds a complication to the assumption - there is one formation in the BNC that deviates from the tendency:

For example, -ing adjectives such as alarming, gratifying, mocking form comparatives and superlatives through periphrasis not morphology (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan, 1999: 523), hence more/most alarming instead of *alarminger/est. Frequency data confirm this rule. The only exception found in the British National Corpus is this one occurrence of boringest: ‘…it’s always the boringest people, I’ve never seen any of them smile, laugh, talk…’.

What is to be done here? The author discusses the situation of this possible counterexample. Because the word appears but is infrequent, he has to admit a lack of evidence for this to be a "competing form." In the next two sentences, the author then states a contextual reason for the usage to come up - "boringest" as an unusual form may show the distinct personality of the person using it. "Boringest" is "marked" or emphatic:

There is not enough evidence to suggest that boringest is a competing form to the standard most boring. In the concordance line quoted, the speaker may want to highlight how dull these people are by contrasting his/her own interesting personality. The adoption of the marked form boringest shows individuality and an unconventional streak, distancing the speaker from the people being denigrated.

Now this is where I think a lot of readings make an incorrect assumption. Even if they were clear that the author was discussing assumptions made by corpus researchers, they might assume that the example affirming that boringest is an unusual form meant that it was an ungrammatical form. However, in the last few sentences the author has focused instead on marked langauge, on individuality, on an unconventional streak. That leads the author to distinguish these features - stylistics - from grammar, to say that the corpus shows evidence of stylistics.

But this is the domain of stylistics, not grammar.

Indeed, for this author, what researchers are studying in frequency analysis is stylistics. The question of grammaticality need not correlate with that. Thus he makes this bold claim:

There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

Now, that is evidently a controversial statement, based on the responses to this question. So the statement may be incorrect, and it may benefit from further elaboration. However, within the context of this author's argument in this paragraph, the denotative meaning fits. Corpus frequency spoke to stylistics, not grammar, and so despite the low frequency boringest is (for the author) grammatical.

Paper-level reading

Now, regarding the paper as a whole, this interpretation of the sentence fits, according to a few points of evidence:

The abstract sets up the paper as an examination of individual readings of decontextualized sentences as a judgment of grammaticality -

A standard method of determining whether a construction is well-formed is a grammaticality judgment test, where subjects make an intuitive pronouncement on the accuracy of form and structure in individual decontextualized sentences ...

as compared with several sometimes-conflicting sources of evidence:

evidence on the frequency of usage, from corpora, and internal linguistic criteria

So the abstract leads one to expect that different forms of evaluating grammar will be compared, without necessarily holding one (like corpus frequency searching) as more important.

Then the introduction develops further an idea that, when the author is examining the assessment of error by others, he does so in a context that regards some items considered "errors" as productive language usage:

For instance, one critic’s error is often another critic’s creativity: according to Cook (2000), our natural penchant for playing with language takes us into the territory where accuracy loses its boundaries. This process is actually associated with highly-developed language competence because it demands great sensitivity to language norms and awareness of occasions when they can be eased or broken.

That fits in with the author's description of the individual who used boringest - they are individual and creative, and may involve "highly-developed language competence." The author refers to an outside source to make this claim, but does not describe it as an outside assumption - he says "this process is actually associated," indicating a belief in the actuality of the statement.

By the end of the introduction, the author clarifies that he draws a distinction between obvious errors (like "four furnitures") and then suggests that there may be grammatical usage that doesn't correspond to standard rules (like his example of "boringest" suggests):

Error is a reality of language use and dealing with grammar that does not conform to a rule-based description of the standard language presents theoretical and practical challenges.

Note that this is an adequate response to sumelic's concern that the author believes in the periphrastic rule universally, that boringest cannot be (a) an exception and (b) grammatical. Yet, if the author acknowledges the existence of grammar that doesn't conform to rules, then it makes sense that both examples described by the rule and its exception (boringest) could be grammatical.

The remainder of the paper uses responses from English language teachers to study three kinds of appeals used in arguing for grammaticality. The author takes neither of their sides. The conclusion assess the difficulty of using either corpus-based methods or a series of individual judgments to assess grammaticality:

Indeed, grammaticality judgment tests share one of the more disconcerting side-effects of the plethora of corpus studies, namely a lack of confidence in grammatical description.

In other words, corpus tests aren't very reliable at assessing grammaticality. That's the very assumption that would allow the author to state that boringest is grammatical despite the corpus evidence.

Summary

Given the paragraph-level evidence and the paper-level evidence, the statement

There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English

makes sense as literally stated. It is consistent with his paragraph-level point that corpus frequency analysis focuses on stylistics and not grammar, and it fits an overall paper that compares two kinds of frequency analysis (corpus usage, individual assessments) in order to say that they have a probability of being correct but are not always so. That said, many of us readers would prefer the author elaborate on why the author thinks its grammaticality should go unquestioned.

Answer 2

There is no question that it is confusing.

But on consideration I would vote for answer (2)

(2) The author has been guilty of a misnegation error and should have written There is no question that boringest does not belong to the grammar of standard English.

As you noted in your question, standard dictionary definitions of 'there is no question about/that' interpret the phrase as 'definitely the case', e.g Macmillans Dictionay:

used for saying that something is definitely true

He will win. There is no question about it.

There is no question that she has a great voice.

According to the dictionary definition, your passage is saying it is definitely the case that 'boringest' belongs to the grammar of standard English.

But that seems to be the opposite of what the author wants to say based upon other statements in the passage :

Common forms and structures will be fully grammatical, rarer items dubious... There is not enough evidence to suggest that boringist is a competing form to more boring in standard English.

Viewed from this perspective (squirm: this is the weak link, inferential evidence -- the answer really depends on how you interpret the whole passage) the author has used the phrase incorrectly.

Moving into even more speculative territory it may be a case of confusing 'there's no question of' with 'there's no quesion that'. Here for instance is the MacMillan definition of 'there is no question of' which means pretty much the opposite of 'there's no question that':

if there is no question of something, it definitely will not happen

They loved each other but there was no question of marriage.

*There is no question of us interfering in the running of the business.

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Edit note: Having looked at the other answers and the comments, it occurs to me that in terms of finding an answer to the question, the word standard is important in the phrase: There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English. The author is not saying that boringest is per se illegitimate -- there may be usages which don't correspond to rule-based description. He has no objections to it stylistically and surmises that it may be used to express individuality, but it is not standard English grammar.

Answer 3

Your conclusion #1 is correct.

This sentence (as-written) is consistent with the purpose of the work. I.e. the author’s arguments support that boringest IS a legitimate usage.

Context of the Sentence:

The excerpt is taken from a section entitled "A tale of two methodologies" in which the author describes two methods by which word usage can be determined to be legitimate.

The first methodology determines legitimacy via frequency of usage, e.g. the more frequently people use the word "shoveling" makes that word more legitimate. One problem with that method is that uncommon but useful usages are viewed as less legitimate simply because they are not needed nearly as often as a more common use of the same word (this is my interpretation).

Second is an "introspective" methodology in which argues that native speakers and/or language experts should be competent to decide whether a usage is grammatical or not regardless of how frequently it has been uttered/written.

The author uses boringest as an example of a word with very rare usage in the British National Corpus. He speculates that it was likely accepted because it conveys an idea that is not equal to most boring, and that it could serve a useful purpose despite that the same forms of other words (gratifying, mocking, alarming) are absent from the BNC. The point is that the introspective method must have been used to include boringest (because it’s rarely used), and that it’s inclusion is significant (because analagous forms of similar words are absent).

My Interpretation of the Sentence:

This is where he makes the statement

There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

I do not believe this to be a typo since the author led up to the statement with an argument supporting boringest as legitimate. The converse of this statement:

There is no question that boringest does not belong to the grammar of standard English.

...would be nonsensical in this context because the author just told the reader that it's in the BNC, and is moreover useful. Given that he spent several sentences supporting that inclusion of boringest in the BNC is significant, and the word is useful, he couldn’t then credibly claim that it’s unquestionably not standard English.

The author goes on to describe several studies that investigated infrequent usages. If the author had not first made the point that boringest should be included in the BNC, despite that it is not used frequently, it would not be clear that the introspective method or research on the legitimacy of infrequent usages using an introspective approach have any importance, or that the reader should care about their results.

My Conclusion:

The statement "There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English." makes sense as it is written in the context of this work.

Answer 4

I'm a bit reluctant to post this as an answer since I don't really have anything to say on the construction "there is no question that".

However, to me the context implies that Rimmer considers boringest to be ungrammatical. The reason is this earlier sentence:

For example, -ing adjectives such as alarming, gratifying, mocking form comparatives and superlatives through periphrasis not morphology (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan, 1999: 523), hence more/most alarming instead of *alarminger/est.

Here, alarminger and alarmingest are marked with the asterisk symbol, which indicates ungrammaticality. Unless Rimmer deliberately wrote something that he thinks is false here just to illustrate the methodology that he is describing, this sentence implies that Rimmer thinks that alarmingest is actually ungrammatical according to some rule of standard English grammar that forbids the use of the suffix -est after -ing, and that same rule would imply that boringest is also ungrammatical.

A form can be used intentionally and for stylistic purposes without being grammatical in the speaker's language (or in the standard form of the speaker's language). For example, "ain't" does not belong to the grammar of standard English (although it is part of the grammar of many other kinds of English), but it is not too uncommon for standard English speakers to use ain't for stylistic purposes.

As other answers have mentioned, the author didn't necessarily leave out a not. There are other ways that this sentence could have been written to mean the opposite of what the author intended to say. The author might have mistakenly used "There is no question that" in place of another expression that would have had the correct meaning.

Answer 5

Without a doubt, the author intends to say that boringest does not belong to the grammar of standard English--at least not on the basis of the analysis of corpora. He goes to considerable length to explain this method of determining what is and is not standard, as summarized in other answers.

Thus, he (or his editor) has made a mistake (misnegation). Or hasn't he? Is it possible that 'There is no question that...' can mean both (definitely is / definitely is not), and needs the context to disambiguate it'?

The infamous Google NGram has many examples of the phrase no question that, from the proceedings of the British Parliament over centuries to a more recent U.S. presidential speech. I found no case where the phrase needed context for disambiguation (and I did read many of them one by one).

From a journal published in India in the 19th century, and a more recent book on philosophy:

... there can, I imagine, be no question that the sale, though it might have been irregular and originally invalid, would not have been fraudulent.Calcutta Monthly Journal, 1836, p. 278

There is no question that Rawls can begin with issues traditionally understood to be part of social justice. The question is whether he can keep his theory so confined.Institutions and Social Justice by Ned Diver, p. 152

A 1993 speech about NAFTA, imports, exports, and the like includes multiple instances of no question that.

Because there is no question that, no matter what you think about the adequacy of the side agreements, they will raise the cost of labor and environmental investments above the point where they are now. There is no question that the ...Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William Jefferson Clinton, 1993

The examples support the dictionary definition of the phrase--it needs no context for disambiguation. The author of the paragraph quoted in the question writes books on grammar for students of English as a second language. How did an editor miss this? Well, we all make mistakes.

Answer 6

First, we must define what '[the debate about whether] boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English' means here. The author explains: 'Common forms and structures will be fully grammatical, rarer items dubious.' He is using 'grammatical' in the sense considered a [well-formed] word on the basis of regular use as shown in the corpora studies mentioned, and, to some degree, morphology requirements.

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Then we need to look at the expression

'there is no question that [X is true]'.

From all that is said, the author must be summarising

'There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English' as meaning

'There is no way that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.'

But this is not what the fixed expression actually means.

It means 'There is no doubt that [boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English]'.

'The caveat given in the Farlex Dictionary of Idioms probably highlights the cause of this aberration:

be no question that (something will happen/is the case)

To be absolutely certain that something will happen, be done, or be the case.

If you ask me, there's no question that there is something fishy going on with the company's cash flow

I just know that if you keep working hard, there will be no question that you'll be promoted soon.

(Note: Often confused with "be no question of" doing something, which means that there is no possibility that something will be done or is the case.)

'There is no question that boringest belongs to ...' being replaced by 'There is no question of boringest belonging to ...' resolves the issue.

.............

'Grammatical' should perhaps be read 'in the English lexis' to conform with the narrower definition of 'grammatical' considered de rigeur on ELU.

Answer 7

Let me first dissect the preceding passage like this:

The author presents "the only exception":

The only exception found in the British National Corpus is this one occurrence of boringest: ‘…it’s always the boringest people, I’ve never seen any of them smile, laugh, talk…’.

The author claims that boringest is not standard English:

There is not enough evidence to suggest that boringest is a competing form to the standard most boring.

The author tries to explain the existence of "the only exception" by assuming that there may have been a stylistic reason that the speaker intentionally chose the ungrammatical form:

In the concordance line quoted, the speaker may want to highlight how dull these people are by contrasting his/her own interesting personality. The adoption of the marked form boringest shows individuality and an unconventional streak, distancing the speaker from the people being denigrated. But this is the domain of stylistics, not grammar.

The problematic sentence:

There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

I say the sentence is problematic because the preceding passage is not in line with the sentence. What the author should have said was something like "There is no possibility that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English."

I can't think of an example where the non-count noun question in the construction There is/was no question that... can actually mean "possibility".

So I think I'd go with 2.

Answer 8

There is no question that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English

The meaning of this sentence is quite easy

There is no Question. meaning There is no possibility [Merriam-Webster] Definition 2d. 1

That boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English.

The writer is debating word forms and uses frequency data to confirm the rule. Boringest is the exception. He then goes on to say that there is no evidence that Boringest should replace the standard form used at present. Then he makes the statement "There is no question (possibility) that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English"

meaning There is no possibility that boringest belongs to the grammar of standard English

To summarise

there is no question that ....is an idiom used for saying that something is definitely true

However the Idiom is not used here. That and the sentence taken out of context is where the confusion relating to this question has come from.