phrase meaning - "Why does paper cut so well?", ambiguous question? -... https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/464223/why-does-paper-cut...

“Why does paper cut so well?”, ambiguous question?

I have posted a question titled "Why does paper cut so well?" (on the Physics stack exchange). After a while, I noticed that over 40 people understood the
question as "Why is it so easy to cut paper (with a pair of scissors)?". But what I meant was that it was easy to cut things with paper, paper being the cutting
material. So I edited the question to make it more explicit.

I am not a native English speaker, and I completely missed the ambiguity. And now that I know about it, even if I force myself, I am unable to understand the
question "Why does paper cut so well?" as "Why is it so easy to cut through paper?". I would understand if the question was "How can paper be cut so well?".
So using "to be cut" as opposed to "to cut".

I wonder what I am missing. How is it possible to understand the question that way?

phrase-meaning ambiguity sentence-meaning

asked 2 days ago

coniferous_smellerULPB
G-W8ZgjR
388 2 6

New contributor

31 If it's any consolation I actually read it the way you intended when I first read it. It immediately made me wonder about paper cuts. So, I'm also at a bit of a loss as to why you would find that
people understood paper as the material to be cut and not the material that would do the cutting. – psosuna 2 days ago

1 @psosuna I also asked on IRC, and about half the people understood it either way. So it was split there too. – coniferous_smellerULPBG-W8ZgjR 2 days ago

Oh, funny, I didn't even think of the second interpretation, having seen the original title on the HNQ. – Azor Ahai 2 days ago

4 I would have thought the second meaning would be expressed by 'why is paper cut so easily? ' I immediately accepted your own meaning relating to paper-cuts on skin. – Nigel J 2 days ago

2 If you make cut transitive the ambiguity goes away: Why does paper cut fingers so easily? – John Lawler 2 days ago

5 My immediate interpretation of the title was the one you did not intend. But upon reading the question I quickly understood your actual meaning. Very understandable that to a non-native the
alternative interpretation wouldn't be obvious. My guess is that for me, my quick grasp of paper as a noun plus cut as a verb led me to associate with "cutting paper". Multiple answers below
explain the grammar behind this interpretation. – Dave Costa 2 days ago

Not enough words to know if you're using the noun or the verb. – Mazura 2 days ago

If you were to cut paper, what verb would you use in-place of "cut"? Slice? – Malandy 2 days ago

I wonder if there's an American/British difference here. I (UK) immediately thought that you meant what you meant. Mainly because for the alternative I'd expect 'easily' rather than 'so well' - I
associate well with the active part of teh sentence – Orangesandlemons 2 days ago

1 A less ambiguous way of asking might be "why is paper so good at cutting [things]" or "...so effective at cutting [things]." But I, like psosuna and Orangesandlemons, immediately understood
the question as you intended. @Orangesandlemons I'm from the US. – phoog 2 days ago

@Orangesandlemons - I'm also UK and got the exact opposite sense of the question than you did; I thought along the lines of "why does butter spread so well" and similar. It's funny how
different people see the same thing different ways. – Spratty yesterday

@Spratty and phoog so probably not a geographical usage issue. – Orangesandlemons yesterday

Your original title …How come paper can cut so well?… was less ambiguous, although it doesn't eliminate the double interpretation completely. The editor should have left the "How come"
part well alone. – Mari-Lou A yesterday

When I first saw the title, it was "Why does paper cut so well?". I made a suggested edit of the title to "Why does paper cut skin so well?", since that was what the body of the question was
about. That edit was ultimately rejected in favour of "Why does paper cut through things so well?", which is not so accurate as the question is still only about cutting skin (on fingers, etc.). If
you want the question to be more general, you should edit the body to match the title. – CJ Dennis 10 hours ago

@CJDennis you should bring this conversation below the original post on the Physics Stack Exchange. Nevertheless, from the body of the text: "it's extremely counter-intuitive that a sheet of
paper could cut through human skin and probably through stiffer/harder materials". To me, it is clear that I am not solely focusing on skin itself. – coniferous_smellerULPBG-W8ZgjR 2
hours ago

5 Answers

This kind of construction has been called an "internal argument as subject" construction, but is more
broadly known as a "middle construction," as in between active and passive. It strikes me as not
particularly unusual, if maybe a little bit literary.

For example, from Massam (1991), where "_" marks the empty structural object:

This article analyses middle constructions in English, accounting for their key syntactic and
semantic properties. The analysis rests on the observation that there are certain similarities between
middle, tough and recipe-context null-object constructions, such as in (ia-c).
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