From ragnarok@pobox.com Thu Mar 25 13:40:21 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: ragnarok@pobox.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 39868 invoked from network); 25 Mar 2004 21:40:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.166) by m3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 25 Mar 2004 21:40:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailserv1.intrex.net) (209.42.192.236) by mta5.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 25 Mar 2004 21:40:20 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mailserv1.intrex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 80457D83D for ; Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:40:19 -0500 (EST) Received: from craig (client212-89.dsl.intrex.net [209.42.212.89]) by mailserv1.intrex.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 15DC1D7BD for ; Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:39:55 -0500 (EST) To: Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:39:00 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <7C1651BC-7E6D-11D8-99E6-003065E00134@free.fr> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Importance: Normal X-Virus-Scanned: by viruswatch at intrex.net X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 209.42.192.236 From: "Craig" Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: reply to a negated selbri (compared to French) X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=48763382 X-Yahoo-Profile: kreig_daniyl X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 21808 The Spanish one is not at all surprising, because negatives are formed by negating everything rather than one thing as in English. Double negatives are not only still negative, they are preferred over single negatives. In Spanish, therefore, it is only consistent for the negative answer to match the negative thing expressed in a sentence with negative words. This may be the case for other Romance languages as well, therefore, since many of them prefer multiple negative words. English, however, does things differently. That we answer negative questions the way we do is odd, but that's just what we do. - mi'e .kreig.daniyl. ragnarok@pobox.com teucer@bnomic.org