Tennyson's "Not!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

So...Holy Grail? Missing Link? Smoking gun? Stupid question?

I never thought you'd go politician on me, Larry!

JL

On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 8:27 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Tennyson's "Not!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 8:01 PM -0400 9/7/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >"The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854)  says,
> >
> >
> >"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
> >Was there a man dismayed?
> >Not though the soldier knew
> >    Someone had blundered.
> >
> >
> >Except for the exclamatory stress, does T's grammar differ from the
> current
> >interjectional use of "Not!"?
> >
> >Is this the long-sought missing link between culture and unculture?  The
> >veritable Holy Grail and smoking gun of "Not!" studies?
> >
> >JL
> >
> Waaallll...He *could* have been a bit more helpful by punctuating it
> differently:
>
> "Not!  Though the soldier knew..."
>
> In any case Tennyson's rhyme scheme--it continues, of course,
>
> Theirs not to make reply,
> Theirs not to reason why,
> Theirs but to do and die.
> Into the valley of Death
> Rode the six hundred.
>
> --suggests he pronounced the number ['h^nd at rd] as in "blundered" or,
> later, "thunder'd" and "wonder'd".
>
> LH
>
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