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Yet few colleges and universities have taken sufficient account...

Does the sentence above imply a negative/opposite meaning? e.g:

Few colleges and universities haven't taken sufficient account...

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1  
Yes, but only because few is a negative trigger, as you can see if you use a few instead. That changes the meaning drastically, since a few is affirmative. – John Lawler Jun 26 '12 at 4:39
Can't believe I asked this lol – Mouse Hello Jun 26 '12 at 4:45
Nice pdf anyway =) – Mouse Hello Jun 26 '12 at 4:48
@JohnLawler: I think you've misread the question (as I did at first). You're right that the negative polarity of "few" changes the discourse meaning of "yet", but it does not change the truth-value of the sentence in the way that Mouse Hello's second example suggests. – Colin Fine Jun 26 '12 at 8:35
@ColinFine: Perhaps. And perhaps you've misread my comment. It's obvious the poster didn't notice that few itself is a negative, and it's obvious that's where the ungrammatical second example comes from. The negativity of few was the only point I wanted to make in my comment (and why I didn't comment as an Answer.) – John Lawler Jun 26 '12 at 14:25

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

It implies a negative meaning from the sentence preceding it — it does not negate the "to take" verb in this sentence. The meaning is actually this:

However, few colleges and universities have taken sufficient account...

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up vote 1 down vote

There is one formal expression, "be yet to." Ex.

Few colleges are yet to take sufficient account.

In this case, yes, although the structure is positive the meaning will be negative.

But in your particular example above, yet is used as a conjunction. It means something like "surprisingly however." Ex.

The minister of education emphasized the gravity of the issue. Yet few colleges and universities have taken sufficient account.

So, and to answer your question, the "few colleges" did "take sufficient account."

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I think your first example would actually be positive, implying Most colleges have now taken account... Did you mean A few? – TimLymington Jun 26 '12 at 11:51
Hi Tim. It depends on what we mean by "positive/ negative." When I teach, "negative" sentences are those that are negated or have the word "not." This is why I mentioned that, structurally, "be yet to" is positive. But semantically, it's equivalent to "haven't p.p. yet" – Cool Elf Jun 26 '12 at 12:18
All I meant was that your sentence appears to contain a double negative; sorry if I have confused the issue. – TimLymington Jun 26 '12 at 17:02
Got it, Tim. Actually, I also realized the ambiguity that "few" and "a few" presented in my example. So your comment was perfectly valid :-) – Cool Elf Jun 26 '12 at 17:06
up vote 0 down vote

Yes it reflect the negative sense but not negating its verb in fact it is the another way to say

Many of colleges and universities have not taken sufficient account...

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