By Conversations, Negations

Christanford wrote:When watching American dramas, I have trouble distinguishing between "can't" and "can". How are they different in terms of pronunciation?I sometimes can guess from the context, but when people say something like " I can't not go", I will be very confused and have to look at...

I am trying to formulate guidelines for learners of English as a foreign language with regards the use of may/might/could to express possibility. It seems to me that you can use these three modals (almost) interchangeably when expressing possibility. For example, 'Where's Mary?' 'I'm not sure....

Hi, I'm afraid this is a difficult question. But I hope it's not! Difficult questions are good. But they cost you more. The topic is: how to use negations in order to be emphatic instead of saying it another way.I'll give you the meaning too, and I'll write my choices and comments in blue.A -...

CalifJim wrote:I don't think there really is a "right context" for this sentence. It seems somehow ill-formed. The problem is the ambiguity in the scope of the negation.Tom hasn't been sleeping since 2."Tom has been doing non-sleeping since 2"? i.e., Tom has been (continuously) awake since...

I don't think there really is a "right context" for this sentence. It seems somehow ill-formed. The problem is the ambiguity in the scope of the negation. Tom hasn't been sleeping since 2. "Tom has been doing non-sleeping since 2"? i.e., Tom has been (continuously) awake since...

OK. I see what you mean. you may becomes may you. Sentences from this group are rarely used in ordinary conversation. It is more typical of formal written greetings. In the examples of the "Exclamations" group, another less used category, it appears that the inversion occurs because of...

CalifJim wrote:I'm fairly confident that what you meant to say was: One doesn't often mention lakes in an everyday conversation unless one comes from Minnesota or Finland. Yes, I did. Somehow the two negations sounded fine, yet a bit illogical, to me. I'm sure I've seen it used that way...

Thanks, I didn't know this was called "transferred negation", that's a good pointer in Google According to Section 6 in this doc: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/xiaoz/papers/negation%20in%20english.doc , the "I don't think X" formulation has a slighly different use, as the strength of the...

Let's try, shall we? I don't think he's American. I think he's not American. He's not, I think, American. He's, I don't think, American. He's not American, I think. He's American, I don't think. Well, in this case, transferred negation does not work at all if the main clause is not initial,...

Part of the unnaturalness comes from the informality of the simple example sentences. In ordinary conversation, 'much' is usually reserved for questions and negations, and is replaced, as Nona says, by 'a lot of' in affirmations. In formal writing, however, 'much' appears more often and without...