Re: Negation raising (was: introduction)

On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 16:34:24 -0400
John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:

> > > A:      Is he coming to the office today?
> > > B:      I don't think so.
> If you say it with high level pitch "I-don't-think" followed by falling
> "so", you mean "Absolutely not!"  (This is a rather recent slangy usage.)
I think this is different in British English, where as far as I can
tell I means something like "I don't *think* so", but is often used
to indicate that the speaker is still thinking hard about it. I don't
think, so to say, that it means anything in Irish English. [If someone
in the street said to to me, I'm have to understand it as a rather
imitative use copied from either American or British practice. Basically,
the intonation pattern is too modulated to be Irish ;)]

stephen
--
She wolde weep, if that she saugh a mous        Stephen Mulraney
Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.  <ataltane
  -- Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, GP.144-145  at oceanfree.net>