[WAYYY OT] Begs the question

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Tuesday 22 March 2011 03:37:15 Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 03/21/2011 05:49 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> > Apparently Nero Wolfe is willing to make contact with
> > the expression "begs the question" :-).
> 
> If you read it carefully, you'll see that he's not misusing it; he's
> pointing out that whoever Whipple is referring to as "they" are assuming
> that "it has a basis" without evidence.  If he were misusing it, he'd
> have said, "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?"

Now you've got me curious about this. :-)

If I understand correctly, you say that the original quote (that Tom Horsly 
gave)

   "That begs the question. I'll try again. Why do they think it has a basis?"

is correct usage, while

   "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?"

is incorrect. If I assume that the "I'll try again." sentence in the middle is 
irrelevant in this context, the only difference I see is comma vs. period.

So, all in all, are you actually complaining about punctuation usage?

As English is not my native language, I tend to understand the meaning more 
from the context than from the syntax, so pardon my ignorance in this. Can you 
explain why is the period-sentence correct while the comma-sentence is 
incorrect?

The way I see it, both sentences convey the same meaning, and I don't 
understand why the usage of comma over a period in this case makes the 
statement wrong. This may be some subtlety of English that I am not aware of, 
so I'd be grateful for an explanation. :-)

Best, :-)
Marko