(neither) nor

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On May 8, 2007, at 9:33 AM, Michael Covarrubias wrote:

> I've been writing little bits and pieces about the "nor" recently.
> Interesting
> to note that in addition to deletion of an initial negative there
> are times when
> this coordination jumps categories. Sometimes it's a very awkward
> union as in:
>
> "I have neither friends nor have enemies."
>
> That sentence sounds very wrong partly because the first "neither"
> negates the
> noun "friends" and the corresponding "nor" applies to the verb
> "have". But it's
> probably _mostly_ because the second "have" sounds repetitive.
> Consider the
> following that has a similar non-parallel structure but avoids the
> repetition:
>
> "I have neither friends nor do I want any."
>
> Not a great sentence but it's okay.

Philip Hofmeister at Stanford has looked at non-parallelism in
"either... or" -- with the "either" located 'too high' or 'too low'.
here are two versions of his analysis:

http://www.stanford.edu/~philiph/ellipsis&either.pdf

http://www.stanford.edu/~philiph/either_linearization.pdf

there are similar "neither... nor" and "both... and" examples.

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org