[lit-ideas] Re: Vegetarian -- and Metalinguistic Negation
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 13:24:21 -0400
JL, you make things too complicated.
The comma in the sentence covers it completely.
The would-be sentence "I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals" is NOT
a sentence in this case. Because of the presence of the comma, it is a
dependent clause and is therefore rendered to given the whole sentence the
meaning: "the reason that I am a vegetarian is NOT because I love animals
[big breath in] the reason that I AM a vegetarian is because I hate plants."
There is also some indicating structure in the unusual arrangement of the
first sentence. No one would natural say "I'm a vegetarian because I love
animals" unless they were responding to "why are you a vegetarian" on a
grade 6 literature exam or developing basic syntactic structure as an
"English-as-a-second-language" student. Normally, they would simply respond
"because I love animals."
The more natural structure is "I love animals and for that reason, I'm a
vegetarian. The important part is NOT that they are a vegetarian, but that
they love animals. Of course, I may be wrong because I'm not right.
Paul
>
>In a message dated 8/26/2004 5:19:43 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>Scribe1865@xxxxxxx writes:
>http://www.monpa.com/index.html
>"I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because
>I
>hate plants." - A. Whitney Brown
>-----
>
>
>Interesting case of 'metalinguistic' negation, as L. Horn calls it.
>
>"I'm not a vegetarian" suggests that A. Whitney Brown is _not_ a vegetarian.
>The continuation of the phrase, "because ..." does not then _negate_
>'vegetarian', but one of the alleged reasons why A. Whitney Brown _may
>be_ one.
>
>It's like, "Why I'm a Vegetarian".
>
>On the other hand, the title to Bertrand Russell's book, "Why I'm not a
>Christian" is _not_ metalinguistic, since Bertrand Russell was _not_
>a Christian.
>
>Strictly, in terms of punctuation, I believe the quotation should go:
>
> "I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals;
> I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants."
>
>-- i.e. a ";" or a "." seems to work better than a simple "," -- right?
>
>Cheers,
>
>JL
>
>
>
>
>
>
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