another "could(n't) care less" variation
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Apr 9 04:30:16 UTC 2010
At 11:58 PM -0400 4/8/10, victor steinbok wrote:
>I did not call it "positive"--it was actually something I wanted to
>avoid. I did refer to it as "affirmative".
>
>VS-)
Sorry, yes, you did. But I think my earlier comment holds; it's
affirmative or positive (I'm not sure what the difference is) in its
form--non-negative, in any case--but negative in its force and
behavior (as a llicenser of negative polarity items).
LH
>
>On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:34 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> ... But I'm not sure I'd want
>> to call the form without negation (for "could care less", "give a
>> shit/flying fuck about", "know diddly-squat/jackshit about")
>> *positive*, unless you're just referring to surface form; they
>> represent what I like to call hyponegation. ...
>
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