"That's a foul!"

[bob jenkins]

Originally Posted by bainsey

There we go. That's lucid.

Context and tone indeed matter. If this sentence came from a coach that I knew well, and it came from a humouous angle, there's no way in hell I'm penalizing that. From a kid I don't know, though? (And I don't know any of them.) I don't see how any context would make this permissible for a kid to talk to an official that way.

Bear in mind, too, that Juggling passed on penalizing this sentence. Often times, passing comes off as condoning, so what happened a bit later? The kid mouthed off again. This is why you have to nip those imperative sentences in the bud.

FWIW, "That's a foul!" very seldom gets a second thought from me. It's a declarative sentence, so it's a statement of opinion (or perceived fact?) that's not directed at anyone. I could see it as the last straw of an ABS T, but that's about it.

1) there's a whole range of responses between ignoring and T-ing.

2) I, for one, read the statement as along the lines of "(I wish the ref would) lighten up on the calls a bit" or "(Would you please) lighten up on the calls a bit?"