The Spelling of Cannot

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:00 AM -0600 1/30/01, Mark Odegard wrote:
>I am doing English with Laurence Horn's remarks.
>
>My usual explanation of 'cannot' is that of a blackbird vs. a black bird.
>
>The practical explanation is about the emphasis on 'not'. I can not vs I
>cannot.
>
>I have another English language net group that is questioning 'cannot'. I do
>not have the ability to instruct no-ness.
>
>_________________________________________________________________
I apologize if my remarks were un-Engliah or otherwise unnecessarily
obscure.  I do not, however, see that "cannot" has the invariant
primary stress of "blackbird".  The "emphasis" on 'not' will come and
go dependiing on the speaker and the following material (in
particular, the stress pattern on the main verb), while "blackbird"
(the species noun) always has primary (compound) stress.  In fact,
the only reliable parallel between "cannot" and "blackbird" on the
one hand and between "can not" and "black bird" on the other is the
space in the spelling.

Larry