Timeline for What is the scope of negation (again)?
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| Jun 17, 2020 at 9:49 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Sep 18, 2014 at 10:47 | comment | added | Tim Osborne | we agree that the examples quickly become so difficult to process that they they overstep the boundaries of what can be determined conclusively by introspection. | |
| Sep 18, 2014 at 8:51 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | I think this reveals the fundamental difference between our two approaches. Because I believe that semantics/pragmatics/framing drives the meaning, I don't accept that you can prove the meaning of another sentence by counterexample. You can show common usage and/or prescriptions but each individual use has to be judged on its own. I still think I can construct plausible readings as I outlined them - but that's in my head with my framings. Different speakers will have different framings, thus different interpretations. The negation and constituency constructions only suggest certain things. | |
| Sep 16, 2014 at 15:20 | comment | added | Tim Osborne | see the additional data I've added in my addendum to the question. They demonstrate, I think, that the first of your three example sentences does not allow Reading 1. Thus Reading 3 is plausible for that sentence, as well as for your third sentence. | |
| Sep 14, 2014 at 9:42 | comment | added | Tim Osborne | Thanks again for your response and the clarification. I agree with the readings you assign to two of your examples, but I disagree with one of them. Before revealing my hand, however, I'd like to wait and see how others might respond to the question. | |
| Sep 14, 2014 at 9:39 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | 2. I don't want to pull syntax completely into the realm of pragmatics but to rather blur the lines between them. The 'rules' start looking very questionable when you add meaning and context. Much better to study constructions which are much more fluid and context/speaker sensitive than traditional rules of syntax. Because 'rules' can be phrased in so many radically different ways and yet always leave things unaccounted for, I prefer to leave them behind as a way of understanding language. They are still useful for shorthand generalizations (and some pedagogy) but not with examples like these. | |
| Sep 14, 2014 at 9:30 | comment | added | Dominik Lukes | @TimOsborne 1. Yes, that was my ordering of the readings. | |
| Sep 14, 2014 at 9:13 | comment | added | Tim Osborne | I agree with the criticism of Chomskyan syntax, but mostly for a different reason -- because it doesn't work. It doesn't make correct predictions. The theoretical apparatus is too complex and therefore it is not really so helpful when the goal is to better understand phenomena of syntax. I disagree with your answer, however, insofar as it seems to want to put all of syntax into the sphere of pragmatics. There are concrete and very knowable rules of syntax, e.g. many head-dependent orderings. | |
| Sep 14, 2014 at 8:35 | comment | added | Tim Osborne | Thank you for your response. I am most interested in the readings you are assigning to your examples. To be absolutely clear, Which reading goes to which example exactly? I assume Reading 1 to your first example, Reading 2 to your second example, and Reading 3 to your third example. Right? | |
| Sep 14, 2014 at 8:14 | history | answered | Dominik Lukes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |