Tagged Questions
2
votes
1answer
88 views
When a sentence contains both “not” and “or”, which one has priority?
I am changing a piece of text which current reads:
Payment not deducted
to also include the situation where payments are withheld. The suggested revision of text given to me is
Payment not ...
3
votes
2answers
208 views
Is “I don't work here” literal or does it mean “I am not an employee of this establishment”? [closed]
Part of my work involves visiting retail establishments during business hours. Often, when mistaken for an employee of the store, I am asked a question about where to find something in the store, to ...
1
vote
1answer
148 views
Guidelines for interpretation of “all but a few”
For a clause of the type [all but a few X] [Y], there seem to be two possible interpretations. The first one is "Y is the case for all things/people/places, except for a few X," as in the following ...
5
votes
4answers
344 views
What's the proper interpretation of: “I was kissed by a girl twice”?
The other day I experienced two distinct but similar events. I wanted to convey this to a friend and this is what came to mind:
"I was kissed by a girl twice."
My question is, does this sentence say, ...
8
votes
3answers
801 views
How are pronouns resolved?
Are pronouns in English resolved syntactically or semantically? Do they always refer to the closest matching noun?
A wikipedia article has these examples:
We gave the bananas to the monkeys because ...
