Re: Marge -- new cartoon

On Sun, 14 Feb 1999 12:57:41 +0100, Veronica Karlsson <dre...@on.spammer>
wrote:

>JRO wrote:
>> James Mitchelhill wrote:
>> >Well, yes, all good and well if you're going to be completely gramtical
>> >about it, but speech doesn't really work that gramatically, and tone of
>> >voice can reverse the meaning..
>> >
>> >Artists (in this case JRO) are often too 'close', intellectually or
>> >emotionally to their creations to be able to spot mistakes, oversights,
>> >or just other points of view.
>> >
>>     Your point about spoken speech is kerrect.  Most people do talk just like
>> I captioned, which is how things are. My appologies for Americanisms invading
>> your side of the pond.
>> 

>Bullshit! It's just plain WRONG! It has NOTHING to do with "grammar". It
>has NOTHING to do with "artistic freedom". It has to do with _logic_.
>The people who say "I could care less" never stopped to think about what
>it is they are _actually saying_.

It's not logical precisely because the people never stopped to think
about what they were saying. Generally, in conversational speech, people
don't, mainly because they simply don't have time to. The average gap
between speaking 'turns' in conversation is a lot less than a second. So
people are either speaking or listening for almost all the time.

However, the conversation doesn't have to be logical in order to be
successful; the purpose of conversation is generally to open and
maintain relationships, and to express feelings and opinions. The words
are just the mechanism used to do this. Getting it 'wrong' isn't
detrimental to the conversation generally.

>There's a similar case in Swedish. Lots of people say "everybody is not
>here yet", when what they really mean to say is "not everybody is here
>yet" (the first version means "nobody is here yet", the second means "at
>least one person is not here yet", BIG difference!). Sure, you know what
>they mean, from the situation, and because it's often said that way, but
>it's still WRONG!

If you understand what it means, why does it matter? Anybody speaking is
attempting to communicate an idea, and if the idea is understood, then
the communication has, by definition, been successful.

The choice between using the formal or informal version of a saying
communicates more information about the person (ie. the level of
formality in their relationship to their intended audience) than if they
limited themself to the formal version.

ObAscii:
                  .=-''--._________
                 #                 '-.
        _________#_____________       '.
    .--|-----------------------|--.     '.
 .:' _.-._  <-  >    <  ->   _.-._ ':.
.: .'_|^|_'.<-  >    < - > .' (B) '. :.
:  :|_ o _|:     .:'       :(A) (D):  :
:  '. |v| .'     .:'       '. (C) .'  :
'.   '-.-'    PCpropad4      '-.-'  .'
jim-=._____,=------------=._____.=-'


--
#######################################################################.
####' : '####    James Mitchelhill  azi...@tcp.co.unitedkingdom   #|
##' '.:.' '##                                                         #|
#:----+----:#  "He tapped the Solar God on the shoulder.              #|
##. .':'. .##                               `Hey, sunshine?'"         #|
####. : .####                                                         #|
######################Terry Pratchett#########Small Gods###############|

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