Re: "Barely but booleanly"

On Jun 9, 2008, at 8:22 PM, Kelly Alioth Drinkwater wrote:

> Would the prosody make a difference? IMD, in a sentence like "I can do
> anything", I'd probably put quite a bit of emphasis on the anything,
> whereas "I know any Chinese vocabulary" is patterned just like "I know
> some Chinese vocabulary", without emphasis on any.
>
> (And yes, I'm well aware this is not prescriptively correct. I use it
> consciously.)
I think if I heard someone "I know any Chinese vocabulary" with that
prosody, I would interpret it as meaning "I do not know...", and just
assume that either the speaker had slurred their "don't", or said it
quietly, or that I just failed to hear it for some reason.

>
> On 6/9/08, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:19 AM, Kelly Alioth Drinkwater <
>>  mizunomi@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Really? Uh oh. How about "I know any Chinese vocabulary"?
>>>
>>
>>
>> In fact, I think this is even more likely to be interpreted the
>> opposite of
>>  how you intended. For one, I construed you correctly the first
>> time, but was
>>  thrown off by this sentence. Is this "positive 'any'" a common
>> feature of
>>  people's speech in many places? I have never heard of it before
>> and in fact
>>  instinctively class it as prescriptive-wise incorrect, given the
>> meaning of
>>  "any".
>>
>>
>>  Eugene
>>