Racial epithet makes news

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jul 7, 2010, at 10:18 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote, as the entirety of his response to a posting of mine (reprinted below):
>
>  There is not reason to fail to call someone on a stupid statement... (1)

i'd say this as
  There isn't (any) reason to fail to call... (2)
or
  There is no reason to fail to call... (3)

but all of these versions. (1)-(3), are ok for me (though (1) is awkward for me, archaic in tone), and for me all three convey something very close in meaning to
  There is no reason not to call... (4)

which is not what you wrote.  you wrote instead
  There is no reason to call... (5)

i suppose i should have made this utterly explicit in my posting, but my implicit question there was whether you *intended* to write (5) -- that is, whether (5) can convey (4), or (1)-(3), for you, a possibility i entertained in my posting -- or whether your (5) was an inadvertent error in conveying (1)-(4), another possibility i entertained in my posting -- or a typo, as you might be suggesting in your unhelpful gnomic response above.  (brevity isn't always a virtue.)

just what is it that you're saying?

> On 7/7/2010 1:06 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>> On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:48 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>
>>> ... I give no discount for ignorance. There is no reason to call someone on
>>> a stupid statement just because he's unaware of it being offensive.

>> POTENTIAL UNDERNEGATION ALERT!
>>
>> i'm pretty sure Victor meant what i would frame as "There is no reason not to call someone on a stupid statement just because ..."
>>
>> note that Victor's version has an explicit negation. in "no reason INF" and, in "call someone on X", an idiom with negative tone (similar to "object to X"), so maybe for some people that's enough negativity to go around.  that is,  maybe this one has become conventionalized for some people.

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