A tv ad just came by for the (self-injectable) type 2 diabetes medication Mountjaro, warning:
Mountjaro is not for people with type 1 diabetes or children — call this X
Now, there’s a perfectly sensible understanding of X, call it sense A, in which Mountjaro is not for children, and A is the one intended in the ad. And then there’s a rather odd alternative understanding of it, call it sense B, in which Mountjaro is not for people with children. Being the somewhat perverse person that I am, the peculiar B is the understanding I first saw, and laughed at loud at.
This is very familiar territory on this blog, under the heading of High Attachment (HA) in parsing (as in sense A) versus Low Attachment (LA, as in sense B). I will explain.
But first, about the medication.
From the maker’s website:
Mounjaro [tirzepatide] is an injectable prescription medicine [self-injected once weekly] that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar (glucose) in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
The package:
Now, the attachment ambiguity. (There is a Page on this blog about my postings on attachment.) About X:
High Attachment is intended:
for [[people with type 1 diabetes] or [children]] ‘for people with type 1 diabetes or for children’
The peculiar misparsing is with Low Attachment:
for people [with [type 1 diabetes] or [childen]] ‘for people with type 1 diabetes or with children’
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