[lit-ideas] Vegetarian -- and Metalinguistic Negation
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 13:08:32 EDT
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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