[lit-ideas] Re: On Being Misinformed
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 19:43:11 -0400
My last post today:
McEvoy:
I know that
"I have wrongly been informed that the capital of
France is Lyon". Ungrammatical.
is false.
----
Ritchie is right: you MAY THINK you know -- (versus "you maybe know
it").
While "know" and "inform" behave similarly, they are not the same verb.
"I wrongly knew it" is perhaps MORE ungrammatical than "I have been
wrongly informed".
But the problem is that "mis-know" is a solecism (Unlike "mis-inform").
So one has to allow for less syntactical freedom with "know" which has
no comparative "negative-affixed" counterparts (as "mis-inform"
incorporates the negative affix, "mis-")
We do say, "unbeknownst", but the "un-" modifies "be-", not "know"
really, and in any case, it is an otiose structure:
"Unbeknownst to himself, the king of France is bald" (since he doesn´t
exist) is thus grammatical.
Cheers,
JL
---- the present Prime Minister of UK is a philosopher. He attended
Brasenose (Walter Pater´s college) where he read Philosophy (in the
combo PPE) for 4 years 1982-88).
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