[ZoomZoomZoom]

A retina transplant is for vision, not for blindness.

And you'd lose the bet, in my case that would be a word that dual-serves as a directional preposition meaning "away"/"from" and depending on the situation it's an opposite of "for", but not exactly "against", closer to "for dealing with smth"/"for solving smth.".

If you think more about it, perhaps the stumble is understandable, if you conceptualize Autism not simply a disorder requiring treatment, but a type of neurodiversity. Then the intuition of interpreting the "for" as the "X for Y" conventional medical syntax does not trigger and the title reads awkward.

[dahart]

A retina transplant is a treatment for blindness, and you can optionally leave out “a treatment”. Note that saying “treatment for blindness” doesn’t actually fix anything, it doesn’t mean you treat someone so that they become blind. You seem to be failing to grasp that someone who says something is “for” a problem generally and commonly means that thing helps solve the problem. It’s an accepted and understood figure of speech, in English and many other languages as well - pretty much all Germanic languages, and it works in French and Spanish. Many words in many languages have vague, abstract, and multiple meanings, that’s a feature of language not a bug. Learn it and embrace it instead of fighting it and you’ll have more fun.

What’s your native language?

[ZoomZoomZoom]

> in English and many other languages as well - pretty much all Germanic languages

Absolutely not. In German itself it's "gegen" - "against". In French and Spanish you definitely wouldn't just omit "treatment" from "traitement de/pour"/"tratamiento de/por" and expect the meaning to not change, and both sometimes would use "contra", though less likely.

> You seem to be failing to grasp that someone who says something is “for” a problem

See above, the special-case medical reading of the construction triggers when the object is unequivocally considered a problem.

If someone's fighting anything, it's you, who fail to grasp that the title could actually read ambiguously, depending on your disposition towards Autism and conceptualization of a transplantation procedure.

Lear to embrace ambiguity as a source of humour and have fun, instead of trying to tell people they use a language wrong.

[dahart]

It’s a bit late in your argument to plausibly claim you were joking, if that’s what you are implying; if that was your first reply I’d maybe have believed it. Outside of that, you did use English wrong; to a native speaker “Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials” is obviously discussing an experimental treatment. There’s nothing outrageous or clickbait about it, it’s quite clear.

Nobody said the words can’t literally be ambiguous in English, I actually mentioned that above already, in case you missed it. It’s a common complaint, but complaining doesn’t fix it, and learning how it works does. It’s up to you. Das ist mir Wurst.

Even though you can misread the title, there are no people researching transplants that cause autism. The assumption you have to make to mis-read the title is relatively non-sensical. Even if you do make that assumption, since you are aware that “for” is ambiguous, making an assumption and acting on it clearly risks being wrong. Plus it takes all of 3 seconds to click on the article and realize what the title meant. My sympathy for your argument is somewhat limited. :P

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Never claimed I did. My first message, however, literally says the title is hilarious or outrageous, depending on your personality, all due to the ambiguity. I tried to make fun of it, which landed obviously flat. Well, what a shame.

You're really trying a bit too hard to prove a point, being just slightly condescending in the process, giving strangers life advice all while missing to address the specific argumentative points where you happened do be factually mistaken.

Mayhaps it's your idea of fun, then happy to entertain you.

[dahart]

So you are in fact claiming you were joking? Why didn’t you say that from the start instead of arguing about English? For multiple messages in a row, there’s no indication you were making fun, and the big problem with the joke, the reason it was flat and nobody got it and you received downvotes, is because transplants for autism isn’t ambiguous to native speakers, which is the one and only point I was trying to prove. I didn’t mean to be condescending, I only meant to contradict your apparent insistence that ‘transplants for autism’ is easily misunderstood, because it’s not. I’m all for making fun of English; English is often ridiculous.

Gehst du wegen Medikamenten zum Arzt? Gehst du wegen Schmerzen zum Arzt? Gehst du wegen Medikamenten oder Schmerzen zum Arzt? ¿Vas al médico por medicamentos o por dolor? Allez-vous chez le médecin pour des médicaments ou pour la douleur? Ga je naar de dokter voor medicijnen of voor pijn?

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Oh, man, taking a win when the opponent concedes ground is no fun at all, right?

> So you are in fact claiming you were joking?

Never claimed so. The first message was making fun of the title (which should be obvious even to those struggling with nuance comprehension). It's, BTW, not exactly the same thing as joking. Everything posted further was pretty serious.

> instead of arguing about English

"Arguing about English" paints my part in the discussion in an overly aggressive light. I was mostly answering direct questions and disproving points that were aimed at me or my arguments.

> For multiple messages in a row, there’s no indication you were making fun.

It wasn't the theme of the discussion, reread it and look at what we were actually talking about. If you didn't parse my original message as playful, then, surely, the the fault is mine. I'll work on my eloquence. But I'd rather make a poor attempt at humour and let it fail than keep on repeating "this wasn't serious!" in every subsequent message.

> Because transplants for autism isn’t ambiguous to native speakers

Firstly, this is overgeneralization that you can't possibly posit as a fact, unless you're a linguist that happens to have the stats on hand.

Secondly, the crowd here is rather diverse, and I bet non-natives are not a negligible minority. At least for some of them the awkwardness of the condensed form chosen for the title is pretty obvious, as it was for me.

The bottom line here is the comprehension (including native) is never deterministic, but is context-driven. Temporary alternative parses (even if it converges to a specific interpretation with later context) is an established phenomenon which, to my taste, is a great source of fun. Though I admit this wasn't nearly my best attempt.

> I didn’t mean to be condescending

Then I don't believe you've succeeded. The problem is that you're arguing against a stronger claim than I’m making, whilst being just a bit too assertive, degrading the debate to lifestyle advice, etc.

---

Regarding your multilingual examples, you're most likely not native to a Romance language, because you're missing the distinction between, for example, "por" and "para" which do not translate directly to English "for", so your examples aren't as effective as you probably hoped. "Ir al medico por dolor" translates better to "to go to the doctor because of pain", not "for pain". Same with "wegen", it's literally "because of", not "for".

> I only meant to contradict your apparent insistence that ‘transplants for autism’ is easily misunderstood, because it’s not.

Never said "easily". However, you seem to be adamant on dismissing the two main points I repeatedly tried to get across and which are the reason I made fun of the title in the first place:

1. "Transplant" is a procedure or the result of thereof, it does not lexically encode remediation to the same extent "treatment" or "medication" do. You can transplant a third arm to a human, this won't be considering a health-improving procedure. To rephrase, "transplant" is not inherently therapeutic but is always an intrusive procedure.

2. Again, not everyone conceptualizes an "Autism" of an unknown severity as a condition in need of a treatment involving body-intrusive procedures!

These two facts make the "X for Z" not reliably triggering the "ibuprofen for headache" reading. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen for you so you just dismiss this fact and keep on pushing, instead of admitting there can be ambiguity. You'll surely agree, that it's the medicalized context doing the disambiguation for the concise form, not the syntax itself!

Consider a parallel linguistic construct: "implant for mind control". Would you still argue it's unambiguously "for countering mind control"?