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Post by Verbivore on Nov 3, 2019 0:58:35 GMT
Here's a poser to begin the month (if a tad belatedly):
Can best include more than one?
Example: Bob, Jane, and Kim are my best friends.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 3, 2019 4:14:31 GMT
Yes. The best cheeses come from France. The best men won. Best wishes. Five of the best ways to kill someone are ...
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 3, 2019 5:47:14 GMT
Okay. Thanks, Dave. The question had never occurred to me until yesterday when I heard the example statement. I had a moment (or three!) of uncertainty and that only grew worse until now. The troubling notion was that if best is superlative, can more than one of same thing (e.g. friends) be contemporaneously superlative. But your examples have settled that and I'll be able to sleep tonight. LOL
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 4, 2019 9:05:51 GMT
You’ve got me churning it over, now, Vv.
If you think about what a superlative means, you get the problem. If you think about how it’s used, you don’t. (And by a Wittgensteinian logic, the latter wins.) The clue to our understanding of which pattern is being activated is given by the number involved.
It works for superlatives in general: This year, the hottest days were all in March. This year, the hottest day was in March. The highest bids came from men. The highest bid came from a man. The worst jokes were removed from the script (etc)
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 6, 2019 11:10:53 GMT
“ … needs to be cleaned badly” – found in some recent reading.
No. It needs to be cleaned well – or maybe badly needs to be cleaned.
Why am I so bothered by the poorly considered use of adverbs! I often agonise over the placements of only.
Perhaps retirement’s not entirely wholesome for me. LOL
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 7, 2019 8:15:36 GMT
Yes, the misplacement of "only" causes me to stop listening and to ponder, I'm afraid. "I only have eyes for you"; does that mean he's the only one who has eyes for her, or that he has nothing except eyes for her? If he means that he has eyes for only her, he should say so.
I blame the APS for having made me so picky.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 7, 2019 10:23:10 GMT
* He said that he loved only me. [He loved no one else.] * He said that he only loved me. [Even love has limitations.] * He said that only he loved me. [No one else loved me.] * He said only that he loved me. [He said nothing else.] * He only said that he loved me. [He did not mean it.] * Only he said that he loved me. [No one else said it.]
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 7, 2019 10:30:14 GMT
Yes, LJH, that's how it works. Many times I've constructed such sets of statements around only, only to have people look at me strangely. Glad I'm not alone. :-)
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 7, 2019 19:15:23 GMT
LJH, you've reminded me of a seven-word sentence that's sometimes used as a tool to assist in diagnosing whether someone has Asperger's Syndrome. It's: "I didn't say he stole my money". Depending upon which of those seven words you place the emphasis, the sentence has seven different meanings, i.e.:
"I didn't say he stole my money." (But someone else said it.) "I didn't say he stole my money." (I deny having said it.) "I didn't say he stole my money." (But I thought it.) "I didn't say he stole my money". (But someone stole it.) "I didn't say he stole my money". (He may have taken it accidentally.) "I didn't say he stole my money". (But he stole someone's money.) "I didn't say he stole my money". (But he stole my credit card.)
An AS sufferer, upon hearing each version of the sentence spoken, probably won't be able to determine any difference in meaning.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 9, 2019 9:16:13 GMT
Yes! Excellent, Twod! And now to the weather (or not) … The big news from Oz today – apart from many bushfires (wildfires) too close to home …… (no need for alarm) – was Olive the osprey defies odds to take flight but refuses to leave nest. Judy Martin, spokeswoman for the newly formed Osprey Watch Gold Coast group, is quoted as saying they “want to raise awareness, monitor the local population, and lobby on behalf of the species”. "We would be a voice to be heard in the future and not just a toothless tiger.”What do tigers have to do with ospreys? One wonders if perhaps there might be a less clichéd way to say it. Perhaps something along the lines of: “We would be a chirrup to be heard in the future and not just a clawless raptor”? (Okay that's lame. But so's the cliché.) Imagination, people? Oh well, beats talking about the weather – drought and heat – one offers.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 10, 2019 1:14:49 GMT
I have just had a somewhat disturbing experience when accessing this forum. A pop-up appeared purporting to come from Safari and asking me to complete a survey in return for a special offer. I never do such a thing but there was no way to decline so I partially responded and, eventually, having been asked for things like my email address and telephone number, I think I was given the option of downloading various apps. I certainly don’t want a special offer, still less to download an app so I tried to decline, to no avail. I tried exiting the forum, deleting cookies and even rebooting my iPad, again to no avail. I can’t recall all that happened but eventually, having gone round in circles for some time, I abandoned my computing session for a few hours. Some time later, the problem vanished and, so far, has not recurred either with this forum or any other website.
I have talked to my IT savvy son who says he thinks this was a scam of some kind and had nothing to do with Safari or Apple as it isn’t their style but he has advised me to be particularly cautious in responding to any unusual communications in the future. I certainly didn’t provide any passwords or other confidential information on this occasion but it is disconcerting — especially as I couldn’t discontinue the process no matter what I tried.
The problem seems in some way to have been restricted to my visiting this forum. I have no certain explanation or understanding of what happened but others might like to take care in the event of a similar experience.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 10, 2019 5:32:44 GMT
I had the same thing, and noted that the web address showed Vodaphone-something. It was just when visiting this forum, so I stopped visiting for a while and it seems to have gone away.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 10, 2019 5:55:52 GMT
LJH and Dave M: Does either of you use adblockers and/or malware utilities?
I saw nothing of that spurious pop-up, and I use Safari v 13.0.2 on MacOS 10.13.6. I am heavily armed against ads and spoofs, but nothing's watertight (spamtight?) forever.
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 10, 2019 11:20:25 GMT
I've not experienced that problem. I'm insufficiently techie to offer an opinion as to the cause, but I don't use Safari and I have Malwarebytes Premium installed.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 15, 2019 10:46:24 GMT
I have been delighted to discover that there is an Old English edition of Wikipedia. As I understand it, this is not a translation of articles but a full edition: ang.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hēafodtramet
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