conditional Inuit

[Laurence Horn]

On Dec 28, 2011, at 2:47 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:

> A conditional and its inverse are not logically equivalent.
>
> Neal

Ah, but Victor wrote "may not have", i.e. from "if p then q" we can infer not "if not-p then not-q" but rather "if p then maybe not-p", and even the stronger version ("if not-p then not-q") is generally admitted as an "invited inference" although of course not as a *logical* inference.  And Victor wasn't claiming logical equivalence here, as far as I can tell.



LH


>
> On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>>
>>> Yet another tortured twist on the tired snowclone:
>>>
>>> short URL: http://goo.gl/EKVs8
>>> http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/12/jessica-chastain-film-person-of-the-year-narrative.html
>>>> That outrage lasts pretty much the whole film, which presented a
>>>> special challenge to Chastain. If it�s true that the Eskimos have
>>>> hundreds of words for snow, she has to have had at least a hundred
>>>> different worried, puzzled, what-the-hell-is-going-on expressions for
>>>> this film, each building on the last. I ask if she actually had to
>>>> rehearse in front of a mirror to differentiate them all.
>>>
>>> So. let me get this straight--if it is /not/ true that Eskimos have
>>> hundreds of words for snow, then Jessica Chastain /may not have/ "at
>>> least a hundred different worried, puzzled, what-the-hell-is-going-on
>>> expressions". Good to know.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org