negation up too high

Arnold M. Zwicky zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Wed Dec 14 00:31:28 UTC 2005


elizabeth daingerfield zwicky sends me this, from e-mail to her:

> The downside to this method is that this is not a persistant setting,
> which will be lost on a reboot.

the intended meaning was (keeping the relative clause):

"...this is a non-persistent setting, which will be lost on a reboot."

or (replacing the subordinate relative by a coordinate clause):

"...this is not a persistent setting, and/so it will be lost on a
reboot."

but you can't put negation that high up *and* use a relative clause.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)



More information about the Ads-l mailing list