failures of parallelism

[Beverly Flanigan]

I'll add one that's bothered me for a long time (partly because of the singer):

Tom Jones sings "It's not unusual to be loved by anyone."  Huh?

At 02:05 PM 7/9/2004 -0700, you wrote:
>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)