4 ms·

I may not be there. I might not be there. The former, using old meaning, indicates that you aren't permitted, which is the negating the latter sentence that in

I may not be there. I might not be there. The former, using old meaning, indicates that you aren't permitted, which is the negating the latter sentence that indicates a possibility of being there. But "may not" in the old sense seems slightly weird, in the way that "permitted not" is weird.

logicallee 9y ago
[someone downvoted this but I am just asking this for information, not as a judgment] I'd like to understand the prescriptivist grammar rule. (So I can apply it sometimes for people who might know about these rules.) Under this rule, does any occurrence of "may" mean "permitted", and, therefore, a sentence like "it may rain tomorrow" is just entirely incorrect - has no meaning (other than that it is permitted to rain tomorrow)? So that people following the rule never want editors to allow "it may rain"? (They always want "it might rain")? Is a sentence like "I may have been a bit __(adjective)__" likewise nonsensical? (Meaning, possibly I was a bit (adjective).) Is this past usage also not allowed/nonsensical? What does "may have" mean under this rule, or is it forbidden? Thanks.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  I'm not a prescriptivist myself. I simply like having useful words, which is something I appreciate about the article in question. So, I like the idea that "may" could carry that permissive meaning such that the strictest interpretation is as you suggest. But I don't like it pedantically in practice. To be clear: "It may rain" isn't a problem because there's no confusion possible. I don't care about stretching words in that way. I just like the idea that the distinction is available for cases where it is meaningful. If we lose the distinction between "Can I bike there?" and "May I bike there?" our communication suffers. But "may" is beyond screwy today. Relatedly, although it's fundamentally wrong (not just prescriptively, but like my brain has a bad-syntax error feeling when hearing it), there are places in the U.S. where people say "might could"! See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3211/is-might-could-a-correct-construct https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3211/is-might-co... as on example discussion. Personally, I'm a non-prescriptivist, non-pedantic, amateur linguist who like people actually thinking about words and using them thoughtfully and intentionally.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    This was a useful response, thank you. I think I will only correct "may" to "might" if there's a genuine chance for confusion. I like the use of "may" as "possibly". For example it's an easy way to say, "maaaaybe I was." (I may have been.) Whereas "I might have been" is about a conditional - it means something different than "maybe I was". Come to think of it, our very word "maybe" isn't about permission - and it doesn't have the form "mightbe". Still, it is useful to know what prescriptivists think, so thanks for the summary.

logicallee 9y ago

[someone downvoted this but I am just asking this for information, not as a judgment] I'd like to understand the prescriptivist grammar rule. (So I can apply it sometimes for people who might know about these rules.) Under this rule, does any occurrence of "may" mean "permitted", and, therefore, a sentence like "it may rain tomorrow" is just entirely incorrect - has no meaning (other than that it is permitted to rain tomorrow)? So that people following the rule never want editors to allow "it may rain"? (They always want "it might rain")? Is a sentence like "I may have been a bit __(adjective)__" likewise nonsensical? (Meaning, possibly I was a bit (adjective).) Is this past usage also not allowed/nonsensical? What does "may have" mean under this rule, or is it forbidden? Thanks.

quadrangle 9y ago
I'm not a prescriptivist myself. I simply like having useful words, which is something I appreciate about the article in question. So, I like the idea that "may" could carry that permissive meaning such that the strictest interpretation is as you suggest. But I don't like it pedantically in practice. To be clear: "It may rain" isn't a problem because there's no confusion possible. I don't care about stretching words in that way. I just like the idea that the distinction is available for cases where it is meaningful. If we lose the distinction between "Can I bike there?" and "May I bike there?" our communication suffers. But "may" is beyond screwy today. Relatedly, although it's fundamentally wrong (not just prescriptively, but like my brain has a bad-syntax error feeling when hearing it), there are places in the U.S. where people say "might could"! See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3211/is-might-could-a-correct-construct https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3211/is-might-co... as on example discussion. Personally, I'm a non-prescriptivist, non-pedantic, amateur linguist who like people actually thinking about words and using them thoughtfully and intentionally.
- logicallee 9y ago
  This was a useful response, thank you. I think I will only correct "may" to "might" if there's a genuine chance for confusion. I like the use of "may" as "possibly". For example it's an easy way to say, "maaaaybe I was." (I may have been.) Whereas "I might have been" is about a conditional - it means something different than "maybe I was". Come to think of it, our very word "maybe" isn't about permission - and it doesn't have the form "mightbe". Still, it is useful to know what prescriptivists think, so thanks for the summary.