The Spelling of Cannot

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:05 AM -0500 1/30/01, P2052 at AOL.COM wrote:
>To distinguish it from the emphatic "can NOT"?
>e.g.  A) "She cannot sing."  [neg. ASSERTION]
>                  vs.
>       B) "She can not [NOT] sing." (1.DENIAL [She does not have my
>permission to
>           do so] or 2. DISAGREEMENT [I disagree with your assertion that she
>can.])
>
>I think, thus, that this spelling distinction (cannot/can not) reflects, or,
>rather, parallels the pragmatic distinction between asserted (new) vs.
>presupposed (familiar) information and, most importantly, the scope of
>negation.  In (A), the scope is the lexical verb, "sing."  The presupposed or
>familiar information, the subject "she," is not included; only the singing is
>under the scope of negation .  The subject, "she," might have the ability, or
>permission, to do engage in other activities.  In (B), the scope of negation
>is ambiguous in that its boundary can be any or all of the affirmative
>statement [both presupposed and asserted information].  Consequently, the
>scope of negation can be either  the presupposed information [subject,
>"she,"] as in, NOT She can sing [Someone else is able to or has permission
>to'], or the entire proposition [The speaker disagrees with the assertion
>that "she" can sing], or only the new, asserted information, e.g. NOT can
>sing [The subject either does not have the ability or has not been granted
>permission to do so].

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?

larry
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