A friend sent me the following example of a 'pet peeve':

		"All people are not Republicans" used to mean that there are no Republicans,
		period.  When I hear this now, though, after a brief celebration, I realize
		that the speaker meant "not all people are Republicans".  Sad, but true to
		the times.  

It took me awhile to hear his preferred interpretation of the sentence. Why do we jump the negation from "Republicans" to "all"? That is, we seem to be doing something like taking an existential statement like

		There are no people who are Republicans.
		There are not people who are Republicans.

And turning it into 

		There are people who are not Republicans.

Why?
 
Dr. Seth Katz 
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Bradley University

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