another "could(n't) care less" variation

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Apr 9 04:30:16 UTC 2010


At 11:58 PM -0400 4/8/10, victor steinbok wrote:
>I did not call it "positive"--it was actually something I wanted to
>avoid. I did refer to it as "affirmative".
>
>VS-)

Sorry, yes, you did.  But I think my earlier comment holds; it's
affirmative or positive (I'm not sure what the difference is) in its
form--non-negative, in any case--but negative in its force and
behavior (as a llicenser of negative polarity items).

LH

>
>On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  ... But I'm not sure I'd want
>>  to call the form without negation (for "could care less", "give a
>>  shit/flying fuck about", "know diddly-squat/jackshit about")
>>  *positive*, unless you're just referring to surface form; they
>>  represent what I like to call hyponegation. ...
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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