fun with negatives

[Jonathan Lighter]

> Well, what happens with this?
Andy: Bob, you can't drive for shit!
Bob:  I can too drive for shit!
DAD

Possible only as a joke, IMO.

JL

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 2:20 PM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: fun with negatives
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Well, what happens with this?
> Andy: Bob, you can't drive for shit!
> Bob:  I can too drive for shit!
> DAD
>
>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: fun with negatives
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
>
> Cf.:
>
> A: Robin, you can't drive for sh*t!!
>
> B: Robin, you drive for sh*t!!
>
> These are synonymous in my idiolect, but perhaps not in everyone's.  Is
> there anyone who finds B ungrammatical (by standards of common usage, of
> course)? If so, that would render the statement more readily intelligible.
>
> John surely has identified the sentiment:
>
> "I'm a good driver, and you're paranoid."
>
> I think, however, that he's done so in spite of the *apparent* grammar and
> semantics of the statement.  Part of the problem too be the poet's
> (possible) loose application of "paranoid" in the sense of simply "crazy."
> I
> can't say that I'm familiar with that usage.
>
> There's also may be an odd and confusing assumption that the reader's
> "paranoia" could actually, somehow, be a cause of the driver's
> ability/inability to "drive for sh*t!!"
>
> JL
>
> On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
>
> >
> >
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> >
> > 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."
> > >
>
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"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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