negative force

Travis   Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:30 pm GMT
It's basically because even though there is an orthographic sentence boundary, to me the comparison still works due to the close structures of the two adjacent words; one can easy write "She's going not to make friends. She wants to be left alone" as "She's going not to make friends, she wants to be left alone", where the "not to .. to" works for me. However, apparently for Guest, "not to .. to" is more restricted and is not really able to cross phrase boundaries in that kind of way. It is still somewhat akward to me, though, even though I do not perceive it as just overtly ungrammatical in the way that I perceve "She's going not to make friends" in isolation.
MollyB   Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:39 pm GMT
For me, it works if it's like this:

She going/ to make friends. Meaning "she's going somewhere in order to make friends",

The negative could easily be:.

"She's going not to make friends, she wants to be left alone"

It doesn't work of it's:

She/is going to/make friends. Meaning "it's bound to happen/about to happen". "It's a cert that she will make friends., etc."

The negative cannot be:

*"She's going not to make friends, she wants to be left alone"
Travis   Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:01 pm GMT
Yeah, you're right. I completely missed the double meaning of that sentence myself, which is probably why I said that such was grammatical at all. "She's going not to make friends, she wants to be left" is grammatical to me if "go" is actually the main verb in the first clause. However, such can never have the *future* sense of "be going to", where "make" is the main verb, in the dialect here. That is probably why placing "not" between "going" and "to" is allowed at all - because while my dialect strongly favors "to not" over "not to", it does preserve "not to" for use in comparisons *when* "to" is not part of a quasimodal.

Of course, what this means that this is not an exception to the inseparability of "to" from quasimodal forms at all. Furthermore, what it means is that the last vestiges of "to" as an infinitive marker in quasimodal forms has effectively been lost in many/most dialects. Thus it can probably rightly be called a "purposive marker" in quasimodals in many/most English dialects.

That just raises one question: just what *is* this "purposive marker", exactly. It seems to actually be an affix rather than a clitic, due to stem changes in very many English dialects in forms such as "have to", "(be) going to", "(be) got to", "used to", "want to", and "(be) supposed to" which do not affect their counterparts "have", "going", "got", "used", "want", and "supposed". If "to" were a clitic here then such irregularity should not occur, whereas such sorts of irregularity is very common with affixes.

It also should be noted that this "purposive marker" seems to be a productive one that can be used to form new quasimodal forms, such as the aforementioned "set to", rather than a separate form which has just happened to become incorporated into particular quasimodals at a lexical level. Consequently, to simply call it a "purposive marker" seems to belie the real function and status of "to" in such forms. Rather, it seems to be a general derivational affix for forming quasimodals from normal verbs.

Furthermore, this coincides with the apparent perception of such forms as actual fixed words as opposed to collections of separate grammatical units in phrases. Remember that people normally speak of such forms with "to" included, whereas in the case of independent main verbs which can have a "to"-phrase included with them said "to" is generally omitted when referring to the main verb. This is akin to the common perception of affixes versus clitics in English, where affixes are normally referred to along with the stem which they are attached to, while clitics are generally omitted when their host words are referred to in context.
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:52 pm GMT
Wouldn't it be better to say:

"She's going/ to make friends."

and the negative:

"She's not going to make friends, [(because) she wants to be left alone]"

and then:

"She's going not to make friends, but to fulfill her duty"

Think this "going not to" implies a reason that must be stated while "not going to" doesn't, it's just stating a fact.
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:54 pm GMT
<<Wouldn't it be better to say: ...>>

Why better?
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:59 pm GMT
Travis, could you please explain "clitic" and "stem change"?

OT, could you also tell me what "has scope over" means when used in linguistics?
Travis   Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:12 pm GMT
>>Travis, could you please explain "clitic" and "stem change"?<<

A clitic is an entity between an independent word and an affix, in that while it is pronounced as part of a word it is attached to, it is syntactically a separate word from such. Common examples of clitics in English include things like "-'ll", "-'ve", "-'d", "-'s" and like, but, to contrast, "-n't" is actually an affix (even though many call such a clitic).

A stem change is just when a the main body of a word changes internally independent of anything merely being attached to it. An example of a stem change is the change from "do" /du(:)/ to "don't" to /do(U)nt/. This change is not merely the attachment of /nt/ to the end of the word, and is not phonologically predictable but rather actually involves a phonemic change in the stem "do".

>>OT, could you also tell me what "has scope over" means when used in linguistics?<<

All this means is that second thing is within some structure or area that is somehow connected with the first thing; I really cannot say more about such outside of context.
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:31 pm GMT
<<All this means is that second thing is within some structure or area that is somehow connected with the first thing; I really cannot say more about such outside of context. >>

"Not many liked her."

I read that the negation has scope over "many", but I'm not sure what that means.
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:33 pm GMT
And here...

"Many people didn't like her."

Manu has scope over the negation, so they say. But what does it mean?
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:34 pm GMT
Sorry. I meant...

And here...

"Many people didn't like her."

Many has scope over the negation, so they say. But what does it mean?
Travis   Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:43 pm GMT
All it means is that it is "many" which being negated here.
Guest   Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:57 pm GMT
<<<<Wouldn't it be better to say: ...>>

Why better?>>

Bad choice of words, really. Perhaps what I meant was "easier" or "less complicated".