failures of parallelism

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jul 5, 2004, at 1:23 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ...How about these truly negative ones, just googled up for our
> viewing pleasure:
>
> consider password protecting that directory so that anyone can't come
> along
> and drop your tables
>
> "A customer will feel safer knowing that anyone
> can't just waltz into their place of business."
>
> But anyone can't solve that problem...
>
> The Reality as below: anyone can't do what they want to do/anyone
> can't be what they want to be/anyone can't say what they want to
> say/anyone can't feel what they want to feel
>
> Just anybody can't baptize anybody.
>
> People are looking for more substance in the music, but just anybody
> can't give
> it to them," Ice Cube told the Los Angeles Times
>
> But I still have to know the password so just anybody can't get on
> my desktop and start loading things.
>
> With the fiscal problems we have in Maryland, people are beginning to
> realize that
> just anybody can't be governor

"But anyone can't solve that problem" is a real baffler for me; i have
to stop and work out what someone might have been trying to convey by
it.

the others are, to various degrees, better.  all except the first have
a "just" in them (and i understand the first as if it had a "just"),
which seems to improve things some, especially in the "just anybody"
examples.

i haven't tried to work out what's going on here; these are just gut
reactions.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)