From colin@KINDNESS.DEMON.CO.UK Wed Jun 28 15:10:34 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 16661 invoked from network); 28 Jun 2000 22:10:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 28 Jun 2000 22:10:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO anchor-post-33.mail.demon.net) (194.217.242.91) by mta1 with SMTP; 28 Jun 2000 22:10:30 -0000 Received: from kindness.demon.co.uk ([158.152.216.198] helo=arac) by anchor-post-33.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 137Q2P-000AMx-0X for lojban@egroups.com; Wed, 28 Jun 2000 23:10:29 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] I don't think so, il ne faut pas, etc. Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 23:17:02 +0100 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: <0006262159300G.01794@neofelis> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Importance: Normal From: "Colin Fine" 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. **************************************************************************** **** Colin Fine "Don't just do something! Stand There" - from 'Behold the Spirit' workshop colin@kindness.demon.co.uk **************************************************************************** **** -----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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Just when you thought it was over... http://click.egroups.com/1/5995/4/_/17627/_/962073215/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com