Moral debate

[jack]

Hmm, there seems to be too much debate today. gerald_duck, robert_jones, filecoreinuse. And even extended argument about grammar and ice-cream with feanelwa and ewx not-respectively[1].

I guess I'm putting something off :)

In other news: I expected everyone to criticise my phases of the moon, but they didn't. I can never predict what will set people off ;)

[1] Would you distinguish "non-respectively" meaning "not necessarily in the order listed" and "not-respectively" meaning "not in the order listed?" Why didn't I just change the order? Because then I couldn't have this amusing footnote :)

Comments

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Would you distinguish "non-respectively" meaning "not necessarily in the order listed" and "not-respectively" meaning "not in the order listed?"

No. If only two elements were involved, I would assume that either non- or not-respectively meant "not in the order listed". I would assume that a person wouldn't bother to insert the negative otherwise, following Grice's conversational maxims (and also, in this case, on the basis that it seems more likely to me that ewx would argue extensively about grammar than about ice cream!). If more than two elements were involved, I would assume that various possibilities (other than strict respectiveness) were implied by both wordings, but that the ordering was not especially important (since otherwise the person would have spelt it out explicitly).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It seemed likely to me richard would argue about anything :)

I went and looked up grice's maxims, and then saw the link from google had the already visited colour. Apparently I did that *before* and then forgot.

(And to you and filecoreinuse: yep, consensus seems to be formed that that would not be a useful or traditional distinction, however funny.)