fun with negatives

[Laurence Horn]

Interesting.  I agree with you on the problem with interpretation.  At first glance, this seems like a hypernegation, i.e. it "should" be

> JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID DOESN'T MEAN I CAN DRIVE FOR SH*T!!


But this is impossible, because "can drive for shit" only occurs with an adjacent negation--at least it sounds weird to me to say "It's not true that Robin can drive for shit" or "I doubt Robin can drive for shit" meaning "Robin can't drive for shit".  So the negation in "CAN'T" has to stay for what follows, yet the other negation has to stay too, because the relevant expression it plays off is the one we've discussed earlier:

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID (IT) DOESN'T MEAN THEY'RE NOT AFTER YOU!

So the best we could do with the below would be something like

> JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT THE CASE THAT I CAN'T DRIVE FOR SH*T!!


which is too long to fit on a legible bumper sticker.  Life is hard!

LH



On Oct 5, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> The other day I picked up a book called _Impounded_, published anonymously a
> few years ago in Maine.
>
> Though sold in book stores_Impounded_ is, in point of fact, a thick pad of
> adhesive bumper stickers designed especially to be applied by you - covertly
> of course - to other people's bumpers. But that's neither here nor there.
> One of the stickers bears the following message:
>
> JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID DOESN'T MEAN I CAN'T DRIVE FOR SH*T!!
>
> This utterance seems to be grammatical, but I confess it baffles me.  Can or
> cannot "I" (the driver-victim) "drive for sh*t"?  If so, is that good or
> bad? What effect does the reader-dupe's asserted paranoia have upon the
> driver-victim's ability to drive (or not to drive) "for sh*t"?
>
> In the Future, moreover, all hard-copy books will be pads of adhesive bumper
> stickers. Bumper stickers facilitate rapid recall, enable instant
> comprehension (except in this case), and, unlike the primitive books of
> today, enable the reader instantly to share his or her new insights with the
> great world at large, and in permanent form.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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