Thanks, Bill--beautifully articulated, as usual. My friend--a biology professor--really appreciated your response. Dr. Seth Katz Assistant Professor Department of English Bradley University ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Spruiell, William C Sent: Wed 9/10/2008 12:04 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: a problem in negation I suspect that most speakers use a "pragmatic" rather than strictly logic-based approach to dealing with negation -- that is, there's an immediate jump to "why might someone say this?" that at least partially bypasses "which unit does the negative group with?" That's the only way I can understand why, for example, "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" are interpreted as synonymous by most people. In this particular case, I'd normally think that a speaker saying "All people are not Republicans" might be doing so for one of three reasons: (1) S/he wants me to interpret it differently from "No-one is a Republican," since that's a lot easier if it's what you mean. (This gives your (and my) initial reading) (2) S/he's having one of those not-infrequent slips of the tongue in which the negative you meant didn't parachute in when you wanted it to. (3) S/he had a logic class at some point, and is channeling something like "For all X such that X are members of the set 'people', X is a member of the set 'non-Republican'." I'd probably adjust my guesses based on what I knew of the speaker. If s/he has a tendency to fixate on the Liar's Paradox and what it means for reality, I'd pick #3, especially if s/he occasionally mutters something about early Wittgenstein being *so* much better than later Wittgenstein. Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katz, Seth Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 9:56 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: a problem in negation 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 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/