Tournament: Loyola | Round: 3 | Opponent: Portola AS | Judge: Lena Mizrahi
Interp: The affirmative must defend all member nations of the WTO implementing a plan
- Definitive articles like “the” mean the entirety of the subject – similar to the use of the word “all”
Konig 18 König, Ekkehard. "Definite articles and their uses: ". Aspects of Linguistic Variation, edited by Daniël Olmen, Tanja Mortelmans and Frank Brisard, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2018, pp. 165-184. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110607963-006 Ekkehard König is a German linguist and Professor Emeritus at the Free University of Berlin, specializing in linguistic typology, semantics, and the linguistics of English.
Definite articles have...in examples like (7).
This applies to the resolution because the word “the” before “member nations of the World Trade Organization” means that the resolution is asking the affirmative to defend all of the member nations implementing a policy.
2. “Member nations” is a plural that means that they have to defend more than one.
Winter and Scha 14 Winter, Yoad, and Remko Scha. Plurals. 2014. Web. 4 Sept. 2021.
In English and...generalized quantifier theory (chapter GQ).
Grammar comes first:
a) Stasis Point: using the grammatically correct interpretation of the resolution allows for a fixed stasis point that ensures a predictable division of ground.
b) Resolvability: in grammar there is a definitive right and wrong interpretation which allows for an easily resolved debate. This ensures there is less judge intervention and increases topic education because it encourages less muddled T debates.
Violation: They only defend the US implementing a policy
Vote neg:
Procedural fairness: Their interpretation explodes limits, opening the floodgates to an almost infinite scope of possible affirmatives that can be run at a tournament. They can cherry pick any member nation of the WTO to have reduce IP protections which makes it impossible for the negative to reasonably prepare. This kills neg ground and creates a side bias for the aff. Debate is fundamentally a competitive game which means that fairness is a d-rule and a pre-req to evaluating aff offense.
Argument skills: If I win that the resolution has a definitive article that means they are non-topical. Being topical is critical to allowing the neg to refute the aff in an in-depth fashion. This process produces iterative testing and improvement, where we learn to improve our arguments bases on our opponent’s arguments. This means that they are only winning the arguments they are because of my inability to predictably prepare and respond to them. This kills the educational ability of debate because the aff isn’t being exposed to the best possible counterarguments against their aff and the neg isn’t allowed to practice refutation. The educational aspect of debate is obviously important because schools fund the activity.
TVA solves because they could just read the aff as an advantage. This is terminal defense against the aff and resolves all unique offense.
Drop the debater: If you drop the argument the aff has no offense and therefore there is no reason to vote aff. Also, key to deter future abuse.
Topicality is a voting issue that should be evaluated through competing interps because reasonability is arbitrary and invites intervention. Also, topicality is a yes or no question. You either are topical or you are not topical.
No RVIS: You shouldn’t win for following the rules and RVIS would lead to a chilling effect preventing a check on legitimate abuse.