RE: [lojban] I don't think so, il ne faut pas, etc.

["Colin Fine" <colin@KINDNESS.DEMON.CO.UK>]

Why are people so ready to brand linguistic structures as illogical?

These are not illogical, they just have different scope for their negatives
(between languages, and between different words in the same language).
German 'muss nicht' = English 'need not'; English 'must not' = German 'darf
nicht'.

The latest Transactions of the Philological Society (Vol 98 No 1) is
entirely 'Papers from the Salford Negation conference', and there's one
paper Cormack & Smith, "Head movement and negation in English" which is
entirely about this question, mainly in English but also in Catalan, Basque
and Italian.

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Colin Fine
"Don't just do something! Stand There" - from 'Behold the Spirit' workshop
colin@kindness.demon.co.uk
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-----Original Message-----
From: Pierre Abbat [mailto:phma@oltronics.net]
Sent: 27 June 2000 02:50
To: lojban@egroups.com
Subject: [lojban] I don't think so, il ne faut pas, etc.

In English we say "I don't think it will rain" when we really mean "I think
it
won't rain" (mi jinvi lenu na ba carvi). In French we say "il ne faut pas
confondre boutique et magasin", meaning "il faut ne pas confondre". A
Chinese
waiter once told someone "It is not necessary to eat the nut!" (it's
poisonous). Any more such illogical statements?

phma

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