I would like to transcribe 2 points of English which have been troubling me as of late
1.
“it's okay not to drink”
I saw that on a t shirt by TeenageMillionaire during my trip to Selfridges last tuesday.
Something's been bothering me about it for some time now, and I think I may have worked it out. The designer of that tshirt, assuming he knew English reasonably decently, went out of his way to avoid splitting the infinitive "to drink." Why did he do that? It creates such an awkward sounding phrase. i think someone didn't realize that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a split infinitive in English. In fact, English doesn't even really have infinitive verbs, just the word "to" glued onto the front of the present tense conjugation.
drank is not the same verb as “drink” or “drinks” or “will drink”. All of those are different words with different meanings and different uses in different language games. they all have to do with the same act, but that act is not a verb. It’s an act.
2.
“not the type of mass appeal movie”
– Hongy. Her blog is fantastic, and she outdoes herself in this post.
as a general rule, I was taught in primary school, we shouldn’t express anything in the form of a negative equation
I am not too sure about my stand on this rule, but my opinion is that it would be better to express something in a positive form, such as “a rather esoteric movie”
Negative expressions should be restricted to definitions – a proper definition must include something that is excluded from the ambit of the definition, that is to say, a definition must say what the thing defined is not.
Opinions?
1.
“it's okay not to drink”
I saw that on a t shirt by TeenageMillionaire during my trip to Selfridges last tuesday.
Something's been bothering me about it for some time now, and I think I may have worked it out. The designer of that tshirt, assuming he knew English reasonably decently, went out of his way to avoid splitting the infinitive "to drink." Why did he do that? It creates such an awkward sounding phrase. i think someone didn't realize that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a split infinitive in English. In fact, English doesn't even really have infinitive verbs, just the word "to" glued onto the front of the present tense conjugation.
drank is not the same verb as “drink” or “drinks” or “will drink”. All of those are different words with different meanings and different uses in different language games. they all have to do with the same act, but that act is not a verb. It’s an act.
2.
“not the type of mass appeal movie”
– Hongy. Her blog is fantastic, and she outdoes herself in this post.
as a general rule, I was taught in primary school, we shouldn’t express anything in the form of a negative equation
I am not too sure about my stand on this rule, but my opinion is that it would be better to express something in a positive form, such as “a rather esoteric movie”
Negative expressions should be restricted to definitions – a proper definition must include something that is excluded from the ambit of the definition, that is to say, a definition must say what the thing defined is not.
Opinions?
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