Re: Negation raising (was: introduction)

On Wed, 2002-07-31 at 20:59, Wesley Parish wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 10:14, Christian Thalmann wrote:
> > --- In conlang@y..., John Cowan <jcowan@R...> wrote:
> > > Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
> > > > I think I don't need to give a translation :)))
> > >
> > > I point out this Christophe-ism, not in the spirit of correction, but
> > > rather in the spirit of letting the imagination run away with it.
> > > In English, "I think ..." raises negation from the embedded sentence
> > > to the matrix, so we express this as "I don't think I need ...".
> > > This can happen even across sentences...
> >
> > I have this weird sentence in my head...  could one of you native
> > speakers tell me whether it's actual spoken English or just another
> > brainfart of mine?  ;-)
> >
> > "I can't seem to do it" meaning "It seems that I can't do it."
>
> Valid English in my part of the world.  it seems that the phrase "I can't
> seem" is regarded as being equal to "It seems I can't", and the last few
> words are a separate clause altogether.
I'm probably wrong here, but is that in any way comparable to 'Meseems'
and 'Methinks', from earlier 'to me it seems' and 'to me it thinks',
meaning 'it seems to me' or 'I think'?

Tristan.

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