LL-L: "Double negative" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 18.SEP.1999 (01)

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From: wim kotze [wimkotze at hotmail.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Doube negative" now "logic"

hello Lowlanders,

I would like to comment on the following passage posted by John Feather:

>Primary- (US. grade- or grammar-) school teachers will tell you that
>negatives are multiplicative: -1 x -1 = 1. In real (non-academic) English
>they are not, as in my earlier pentuple example.
>
>Language is just not "logical". The late novelist and critic Marghanita
>Laski had an obsession about the word "only". She argued that it could be
>inserted into a sentence such as "I saw the mountain" in five different
>places to give at least four different meanings - assuming as she did that
>"only" qualifies the immediately following word or phrase. But English
>doesn't work like that. In real E "I only saw the mountain" conveys the
>same
>sense as the "logical" "I saw only the mountain". And logical analysis
>fails
>entirely with the very ordinary sentence "I only saw him yesterday" = "It
>was as recently as yesterday that I saw him" (but that doesn't convey all
>the nuances).
>
>John Feather
>johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

Whether language is illogical or ultimately logical with an extremely
complex set of logic and rules underlaying it, does not make the issues of
"only" or double/triple negation any less interesting. Nor does it mean that
logical analysis has no place, since proficient speakers of a language
intuitively know where the logic applies and where not, as John
demonstrated. As for the sentences "I only saw the mountain" and "I saw only
the mountain", they  do not convey quite the same meaning since the first
sentence can, if the context favours that, also be understood as "I only saw
the mountain ( ie I didn't attempt to climb it)" whereas the other sentence
cannot. Furthermore, "I saw only the mountain" cannot be used as a
satisfactory response to the question "What did you do?" as can "I only saw
the mountain".
I think that the late Marghanita Laski deserves credit for pointing out the
power of the word "only".

Tot later Laaglanders,

Wim Kotze
http://members.tripod.com/wimkotze

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