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<div>At 10:05 AM -0500 1/30/01, P2052@AOL.COM wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">To
distinguish it from the emphatic "can NOT"?<br>
e.g. A) "She cannot sing." [neg. ASSERTION]<br>
<span
></span> vs.<br>
B) "She can not [NOT]
sing." (1.DENIAL [She does not have my<br>
permission to<br>
do so] or
2. DISAGREEMENT [I disagree with your assertion that she<br>
can.])<br>
<br>
I think, thus, that this spelling distinction (cannot/can not)
reflects, or,<br>
rather, parallels the pragmatic distinction between asserted (new)
vs.<br>
presupposed (familiar) information and, most importantly, the scope
of<br>
negation. In (A), the scope is the lexical verb,
"sing." The presupposed or<br>
familiar information, the subject "she," is not included;
only the singing is<br>
under the scope of negation . The subject, "she,"
might have the ability, or<br>
permission, to do engage in other activities. In (B), the scope
of negation<br>
is ambiguous in that its boundary can be any or all of the
affirmative<br>
statement [both presupposed and asserted information].
Consequently, the<br>
scope of negation can be either the presupposed information
[subject,<br>
"she,"] as in, NOT She can sing [Someone else is able to or
has permission<br>
to'], or the entire proposition [The speaker disagrees with the
assertion<br>
that "she" can sing], or only the new, asserted
information, e.g. NOT can<br>
sing [The subject either does not have the ability or has not been
granted</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">permission
to do so]. </font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Let's assume these observations are all correct. I still
don't see how they are more applicable to "CAN + NOT" than
they are to "COULD + NOT", but we can't spell the latter as
a single item "couldnot". That's why I think there's
a certain amount of arbitrariness here. The one persistent
difference is the phonology--the fact that "cannot" can,
but "could not" cannot, be pronounced with stress on the
first syllable and, when it is, with the second vowel reduced to
schwa. (Not that it MUST be, but that it CAN be.) But
what led to these possibilities?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>larry</div>
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