Listening to cable news talkers--lawyers, journalists, people trained in the use of language--I've concluded that to "beg the question" now means either "raise the question" (94%) or "evade the question" (6%). That a large adult son, age 37, lives in his parents' basement begs the question whether he will die of old age down there, and, when asked about it, he begs the question by mumbling something about being out of resume paper.
The former, exclusive meaning of the phrase, however, had to do with a logical fallacy in argumentation--namely, restating the conclusion one seeks to reach in the reasons advanced for adopting that conclusion. Let me try that again. If the reasons advanced for Conclusion A themselves assume Conclusion A to be true, rather than support Conclusion A, then the question of the truth of Conclusion A is being begged. The most straightforward examples--"abortion is wrong, since it's immoral to kill fetuses"--are not very interesting, though perhaps useful in illustrating the flaw. The Wikipedia article on the subject puts forward the following specimen, which I think shows how seductive begging the question can be:
To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State, for it is highly conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.
Possibly since it was smart-seeming people who accused others of begging the question, the phrase attained a certain cachet, and in time increased currency dragged it across a grammarian's border, and in even more time the original meaning was routed. If someone today uses "beg the question" to describe a circular argument, they probably also observe the difference between who and whom, which is almost sort of showoffy.
I also hear distinguished talkers, for example US senators, make a mistake that I think is still unambiguously a mistake--for example:
The allegation was not relayed to my staff and I until the day before yesterday.
The senator should say:
The allegation wasn't relayed to my staff and me until the day before yesterday.
I'd like to know why the ear of a native speaker protects against mistakes of this kind only when the pronoun is unaccompanied. No one would ever say,
The allegation was not relayed to I.
But, for some reason,
The allegation was not relayed to my staff and I
doesn't sound so bad.
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