4 ms·
I think shric was just remarking that English is funny because you can take the exact same words of a sentence and rearrange them a bit so it means the opposite
by cornstalks 4y ago
I think shric was just remarking that English is funny because you can take the exact same words of a sentence and rearrange them a bit so it means the opposite.
- naniwaduni 4y agoMost sentences can be rearranged to mean the converse. This is cross-linguistically pretty common, depending on which atoms you choose to rearrange. Most sentences can be negated with at most a couple of word changes. This is cross-linguistically about as universal and anything in linguistics is, again depending on which atoms you choose as "words". English isn't funny, humans are funny, building all sorts of redundancy into their languages, but then reversing polarity on a dime.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoNot sure how you'd rearrange the same sentence in German to reach the negation without having to change cases and grammatical roles.
- michaelgrafl 4y agoKomm, wir essen, Opa. Komm, wir essen Opa.