No, it doesn't. I said it's grammatically incorrect, not orthographically incorrect. (It's arguably correct orthographically based on the incorrect grammar.)
> [Noun], being [clause], [grammatically correct sentence]
is objectively incorrect English grammar.
Eliding the "being" appositive, you're left with
> [Noun], [sentence].
Unless you're talking to the noun (as in "Hey, you, the well regulated militia! Did you know that the right to keep and bear arms . . . "), it's not grammatically correct.
Ok, get a 2/3 majority of the House and Senate to approve a proposed edit removing those commas, and then get 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve it.
Until then, the commas are officially part of the text.
But the text of the Constitution only changes through amendments.
That said, the effective meaning of the Constitution is "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is."
And to a degree, given the power to impeach Supreme Court justices, "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is, and with Congress sufficiently on board to not impeach sufficient justices to force a shift in the balance of the Court."
But you chose to tell us about your interpretation. :-)
I had less the current legal interpretation and more the meaning at the time of writing down, as it would reveal itself in current text, in mind, which is relevant to this argument.
KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is not clear.
GLdRH said "Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly".
I said that modifying the literal text requires going through the amendment process.
You said "Comma rules change over time."
I reiterated that the literal text does not change except through the amendment process, and also noted that fundamentally the literal words don't matter much as it's up to a majority of the Supreme Court how to interpret any of it.
You then brought up modern language usages of commas.
I replied that how you or I today interpret the text is irrelevant because only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
At no point in this conversation have I expressed a specific interpretation of the text, so your indication that I chose to tell the discussion about my interpretation seems weird and maybe you're misreading usernames somewhere along the way.
, then when you want to discuss meaning issues due to grammar rules, you need to use 18th century grammar. I perceived GLdRH to use 21th century grammar to encode the same sentence. The literal text does not need to be modified, since it uses 18th century grammar rules. Only when you want to parse it with 21th century grammar rules, you need to preprocess it to adjust the grammar first. This preprocessing doesn't need to be written back, since the grammar rules of the text haven't changed. We are only circumventing the parser not supporting the texts grammar.
> only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
This is purely about syntactic issues, not about semantics. The Supreme Court applies also semantics, such as the other legal system definitions of the time. I wasn't replying to that aspect.
No, it doesn't. I said it's grammatically incorrect, not orthographically incorrect. (It's arguably correct orthographically based on the incorrect grammar.)
> [Noun], being [clause], [grammatically correct sentence]
is objectively incorrect English grammar.
Eliding the "being" appositive, you're left with
> [Noun], [sentence].
Unless you're talking to the noun (as in "Hey, you, the well regulated militia! Did you know that the right to keep and bear arms . . . "), it's not grammatically correct.
Ok, get a 2/3 majority of the House and Senate to approve a proposed edit removing those commas, and then get 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve it.
Until then, the commas are officially part of the text.
Comma rules change over time.
But the text of the Constitution only changes through amendments.
That said, the effective meaning of the Constitution is "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is."
And to a degree, given the power to impeach Supreme Court justices, "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is, and with Congress sufficiently on board to not impeach sufficient justices to force a shift in the balance of the Court."
I'm responding to:
>>> Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly
>> Until then, the commas are officially part of the text.
> Comma rules change over time.
Maybe the equivalence of the sentence at drafting, today is without commas?
That depends on the opinions of 9 very specific individuals. How the text and its commas might be interpreted by you or I today is irrelevant.
But you chose to tell us about your interpretation. :-)
I had less the current legal interpretation and more the meaning at the time of writing down, as it would reveal itself in current text, in mind, which is relevant to this argument.
I see the conversation differently.
KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is not clear.
GLdRH said "Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly".
I said that modifying the literal text requires going through the amendment process.
You said "Comma rules change over time."
I reiterated that the literal text does not change except through the amendment process, and also noted that fundamentally the literal words don't matter much as it's up to a majority of the Supreme Court how to interpret any of it.
You then brought up modern language usages of commas.
I replied that how you or I today interpret the text is irrelevant because only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
At no point in this conversation have I expressed a specific interpretation of the text, so your indication that I chose to tell the discussion about my interpretation seems weird and maybe you're misreading usernames somewhere along the way.
> maybe you're misreading usernames
Sorry for that.
> KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is not clear.
I thought me and GLdRH replied to KPGv2 stating that the 2nd amendment isn't valid grammar and this results in some of the unclarity.
When you have this:
, then when you want to discuss meaning issues due to grammar rules, you need to use 18th century grammar. I perceived GLdRH to use 21th century grammar to encode the same sentence. The literal text does not need to be modified, since it uses 18th century grammar rules. Only when you want to parse it with 21th century grammar rules, you need to preprocess it to adjust the grammar first. This preprocessing doesn't need to be written back, since the grammar rules of the text haven't changed. We are only circumventing the parser not supporting the texts grammar.> only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
This is purely about syntactic issues, not about semantics. The Supreme Court applies also semantics, such as the other legal system definitions of the time. I wasn't replying to that aspect.