@δοῦλος: Did you read to the end of my answer? Edit: I've now added a quotation to prove my claim that it's ambiguous.

@ruakh your book reference does not seem as clear as you would think. It does mention "blowing due north" and then later a "north wind", but I don't see any explicit connection between those two winds. A wind blowing due north is not ambiguous; it always indicates the direction it goes.

@eques: I don't know how you can possibly think that, so I'm just going to assume that you're messing with me. :-)

Poor assumption. Not messing. "The wind was blowing due north, almost a gale... <at least one full sentence> ... Our vessel, setting direct for the promontory of Istria, in order to turn the cape leaned of course with a north wind on her side..." It says the wind and later it says a wind. Typically, using an indefinite article indicates a different instance than previous referred. A north wind comes from the north; a wind blowing due north is a south wind.

@eques: So you seriously think that the reason the vessel "leaned of course with a north wind on her side" is that the gale-force blowing-due-north wind . . . what? suddenly (and obviously) changed direction by 180 degrees? Please. So, I'm just going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and stick with my assumption that you're messing with me.

@rukah. Seriously, not messing. Assuming so is rude and unhelpful. My point is that there are two winds referred to, one is a north wind and the other is one indicated to be blowing due north. You assume them to be the same; English pragmatics and typical usage of "north wind" does not. One quote in an obscure book does not make the rule

@eques: I'm sorry if my comments came off as rude -- but only a little bit sorry. This answer got three downvotes from people who really, really want "blowing due north" to be unambiguous, and are willing to assert that categorically and stubbornly in the face of all reason. In the book I linked to, there is only one wind being referred to. This is perfectly normal English pragmatics. (The passage is analogous to, say: "Her father yelled at me. I started to cry. I was angry of course with a grown man yelling at me, but I was scared to yell back.") [continued]

@eques: As for "One quote in an obscure book does not make the rule": Firstly, you're the one who's claiming there's a rule, remember? I'm just saying that the phrase is ambiguous. Secondly, I selected this book because it's the very first Google Books hit for "the wind was blowing north"; it's not as though I searched and searched until I found one that agreed with me. (Incidentally, the book is actually not very obscure; more than a dozen different bookstores are selling new copies on Amazon. But that's neither here nor there.)

The original question is whether blowing due north is ambiguous, which it is not. A direction following blowing is the direction the wind goes, not the direction the wind comes from. You looked at one quote and determined it might mean that blowing due north could means from the north, but it's more likely that the later sentence stating "a north wind" is not using the regular convention.

" I'm sorry if my comments came off as rude -- but only a little bit sorry." You insisted I was messing with you after I already said I wasn't. I take this site and trying to help people understand English quite seriously.

It is far more likely that the author used "a north wind" to mean a wind heading north, then the author meant blowing due north to mean anything but a wind moving north

(Note: I'm on a smartphone right now, so please forgive me if my replies come spottily/haphazardly.)

Re: "You insisted I was messing with you after I already said I wasn't": You're right; that was me being a bit of a jerk, because I was annoyed. I didn't mean it as sincere offense; I was aiming for witty repartee, but I should have known better than to attempt witty repartee about something I was genuinely annoyed about. I apologize.

Re: the meaning in the book: I think it means exactly what it says, and is 100% standard. Having thought about this further, I think I now understand how the ambiguity arises; once I'm back at a normal computer, I will edit my answer to explain it.

it means exactly what it says and is 100% standard? Blowing due north is unambiguous, which is not what you stated before.

"Blowing due north" is ambiguous. But just because a paragraph includes an ambiguous phrase, that doesn't mean the paragraph as a whole is ambiguous. (Consider the famous Groucho Marx line, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know." The first sentence is ambiguous, but the second sentence resolves the ambiguity.)

Blowing due north is not ambiguous. Everyone else who posts doesn't remotely suggest that idea. Can you find any other source which uses blowing due north to mean coming from the north instead of the more logical coming out of the south?

but it's more plausible that blowing due north is not analogous to "moving due north"? That's entirely illogical

"I considered it, and immediately discarded it as implausible" So its more plausible that he meant "blowing due north" to mean something not analogous to "moving due north". That's not logical

Compare also "the river was flowing south" "the path was twisting south"

"My goal was to illustrate the relevant parse; "

Have you read more of the book to see the context and the relevant geography?

Here is another example where "due north" seems to be describing the direction of the wind rather than the direction of motion of the air: books.google.com/….

And of course, "blowing due north" is very frequently analogous to "moving due north", especially nowadays when people often don't think about wind directions in the traditional way.

"At first the wind was blowing due north, but soon it changed to south and east" That describes a wind that was moving north then changed to be moving south and moving east.

Regarding reading more of the book for context and geography: I read the entire page (which was the entry for one day), and I looked the area up on Google Maps. But because he doesn't specify which side the boat is leaning toward, that doesn't seem to help very much.

A nitpick: The wind wasn't moving, it was blowing. Wind itself is moving air, but that's not the same thing.

If you say a wind blowing <direction> that means air is moving in that direction

Usually, yes.

Like how if you say that you shot an elephant in your pajamas, that usually means that you were wearing pajamas while you shot an elephant.

Do you have any evidence for your claim that it always means that?

Seriously. that quote is irrelveant

A verb of motion takes a complement indicating destination

Right, but "blowing" is not always a verb of motion.

If I just say "the wind is blowing", I'm not talking about its motion,

but about the wind as an event that is happening --

analogous to "the sun is shining", "it's raining", etc.

All of those can also be treated as motion verbs -- "the candles shone out into the room",

"it's raining down into the cellar", etc. --

No.

but they do not always take motion-verb-like complements.

you are not using verb of motion in the standard meaning

We can also say "the sun shone in the sky".

adding "out" alters the verb also

in the sky is a locative modifying the sun, which is very different then a direction.

Exactly!

Well done.

Now you understand.

No.

Locative is not motion towards

Right, and in "north wind", "north" is not motion towards either.

It's describing where the wind is --

it is in the north --

not the direction in which the air is moving --

which is southward.

I don't think that an answer that correctly points out that a sentence is ambiguous is "advanced linguistics".

Note that I didn't start explaining all the details of the ambiguity until people started expressing doubts about the ambiguity.

And what I'm telling you is that "north wind" is a convention in English. We could have settled on north wind meaning a wind coming from the north =, but we didnt'

Yes, because everyone else finds it to be nonsensical

Wait, wait a sec.

Are you claiming that "north wind" is a specific idiom?

which is one guideline for erroreous

Like, you think that "the wind is in the north" does not mean that the wind is blowing out of the north?

The wind is in the north generally makes sense to view it as coming from the north.

Right.

So when we describe a wind as "north" -- not just in the specific phrase "north wind" --

we're saying that it's coming from the north.

North wind makes sense that way too, but it is conventional. North is a noun; noun complements don't necessarily follow standard patterns

other then being head-final

"The wind was blowing due north" is ambiguous between two parses: one where "due north" is modifying "wind", and one where it is modifying "blowing".

not really

Looking through the Google Books hits, I get the impression that the former used to be more common, and the latter is more common nowadays.

My downvote stays until you remove the bit about ambiguity.

Heh, O.K.

I'm not going to edit my answer to make statements that I believe to be wrong,

and while it's fine for you to use your downvote to express that you think my answer is wrong,

I don't think you should try to use it as some sort of threat.

(I know you don't mean it as a serious threat,

but it comes off like you're trying to get me to remove the statement by threatening the downvote.)

It's not a threat. I don't downvote much. First time in fact. But I will downvote questions which introduce unnecessary confision

Out of curiosity -- feel free not to answer this question -- but:

did you downvote the accepted answer?

Because it actually also says that it could mean either one,

it just takes the prescriptivist stance that only one meaning is correct.

(It suggests contacting the author to clarify.)

It's a general practice in the community. If an answer is improved, a downvote is removed or an upvote is given.

(The accepted answer has 2 upvotes and 1 downvote, not sure if you can see that at your rep level.)

I did not downvote

Oh, definitely.

I can

I don't think you're wrong to downvote.

I mean, I do,

in that I think your position is wrong;

but given your position, I don't think that your downvote is wrong.

Can you find example of a verb which is also a verb of motion where the complement ambiguous modifies either the subject or the verb?

But "My downvote stays until you remove the bit about ambiguity" comes off as . . . it sounds more like an attempt at censorship, or something.

no, it's a statement of, if you improve your answer, I will retract the downvote. I feel the statement about ambiguity makes the answer less clear for the english learner

I actually think that "shine", while not a perfect example, does meet that criterion;

"the light shone into the room" is using "shine" as a verb of motion.

Calling shine a verb of motion is kind of a stretch. Yes photons are moving

Yeah, certainly;

but into the room doesn't modify "the light"

but the point is that historically, "the wind was blowing" did not consider "blowing" as a verb of motion.

Right, yes, that's an example where the complement modifies the verb of motion.

your claim is that it's ambiguous because "the wind was blowing due north" "due north" either is an adverbial on "blowing" or an adjective of "the wind"

An example where it modifies the subject is something like "the light shone bright".

Correct.

which you are saying is equivalent to the "bright light shone"?

(potentially)

They're not 100% equivalent, because there's a difference between using the adjective attributively and using it predicatively, but -- yes.

(I should note: some analyses actually do consider "bright" to be an adverb in such a context,

"the light show and was bright" then?

shone*

but many do not. I believe that 'CGEL' considers it an adjective.)

Yes, something like that.

and thus "the wind was blowing and was due north"?

Yes.

then the question is: Which direction does the wind go in "the wind was due north"?

By the way, I'm not sure if this helps or just complicates, but -- "the wind is blowing in the north" is much better attested, and clearly means "the air is moving southward".

In "the wind was due north", the wind is blowing from north to south.

I don't think it's easy to define meaning for "was due north" winds don't have location, they have direction. "Was" on its own would be location

"the wind is blowing in the north" that one I would say could be ambiguous, but in a different way. It could mean air moving southward OR that there was wind (from some direction) in an area that is north of the frame of reference

Yes, that's true.

But if you Google "blowing in the north", you'll see that the former meaning is much more common;

I was just considering the second meaning irrelevant.

True. I admit that the second meaning is far less likely. But you might remark "I heard wind blowing in the north" to mean you heard wind north of you, without meaning the wind was passing over you

Yeah, definitely.

And I could easily imagine a weather report mentioning rain in the south and wind in the north and so on.

Re: "winds don't have location, they have direction": Traditionally, they are "located" on the compass.

(Or, not just the compass -- you can also have a "sea breeze" and so on.

But the "location" of the wind == the place or direction it's coming from.)

Located on the compass is partially a remnant of a personification of the wind. "sea breeze" is more of a category than true location. You could have desert wind or sea breeze or mountain gale, etc. But that's more a category than a specific location.

I'm not sure I follow the statement that "Located on the compass is partially a remnant of a personification of the wind". It's true that winds are historically personified, and historically identified with directions, but I don't see how the latter results from the former.

If anything, I would say the reverse; I believe that certain directions in some languages are named for the gods of the winds that come from those directions.

(I think "Boreas" was god of the north wind?)

(Yes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemoi#Boreas)

Boreas means North Wind or Devouring One in Greek. Borealis is Latin for Northern

Right.

(That phrasing seems to be trying to say that this is just a coincidence -- that "borealis" is not related to "boreas" -- but dictionary.reference.com/browse/borealis states that "borealis" is from "boreas".)

(In other words -- the Latin word for "north" comes from the name of the Roman god of the north wind, which was borrowed from the name of the Greek god of the north wind, which comes from a word meaning "devouring one" or "north wind". If I understand correctly.)

The winds were thought as having a single source, in some cases a god. Whereas we now don't think all winds going from north to south are caused by a single source "the north wind"

Right.

Oh, I see.

If you think that all winds from the north are caused by a single blowing entity located in the north,

then "north wind" makes sense as a category.

right

hence Boreas the God of the North Wind

If I remember correctly, Odysseus gets the West Wind in a bag so he can make it home (or something like that)

That was at the island of Aeolus, right?

According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolus, he gave Odysseus "a tightly closed bag full of the captured winds so he could sail easily home to Ithaca on the gentle West Wind",

which matches my recollection (though I last read The Odyssey about than 15 years ago), rather than specifically giving a bag containing the West Wind.

I knew winds in bag and West wind. Forgot which was in which ;)

No worries.

I actually didn't remember the "west wind" part of it at all, though it makes sense that he would need some specific direction.