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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Thursday, March 25th, 2010 07:25 pm (UTC)
Nope, the author didn't mean "not having to avoid." It helps if you rearrange it a bit, though.

"There is no reason to get upset because you get to live forever while having to avoid delicious garlic¹,not being hunted to death by righteous men, while also having every girl or boy in a mile radius fall madly in love with you. That is not the curse of the ages. That is awesome."
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 07:36 pm (UTC)
I'm sorry, it makes no more sense to me that way around either. It still looks as though there's a "not" missing (or possibly, in the original order, an "and").
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 07:50 pm (UTC)
You know, looking at it again, having to avoid garlic is not a positive. I think I see what you're saying now.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 08:00 pm (UTC)
Particularly when described as 'delicious garlic'.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 09:08 pm (UTC)
Having to avoid garlic, while not necessarily a positive, is certainly nothing to get all mopey about.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 09:33 pm (UTC)
It helps if you rephrase it as:

"while neither being hunted to death by righteous men, nor having to avoid delicious garlic."

The author apparently intended the 'not' to modify both clauses, which is a fairly common sentence construction. Using the word 'not' to modify both, however, instead of 'neither,' is uncommon and probably the cause of the confusion.
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 09:53 pm (UTC)
It helps if you rephrase it as:

"while neither being hunted to death by righteous men, nor having to avoid delicious garlic."
Now that's more the phrasing I expected to find there. I've seen the 'not a, b or c' usage all over the place of course, and the 'neither a nor b, but c' usage, but the 'not a, b and c' usage where c is apparently intended neither to be negated nor grouped with a and/or b is just ... grammatically bizarre. When I see the 'not a, b and c' usage I parse it as 'b and c, rather than a'.
Friday, March 26th, 2010 01:21 am (UTC)
The sentence construction is odd, I think because they ran two logical sentences together without really thinking about conjunctions required.

As written I'd interpret it as ((NOT (A OR B)) AND C). But that's largely because "while" is repeated against C, but it's not repeated against "B", so the negation ("while not") carries from A to B, but is removed for C. The lack of both "or" and "and" in the sentence (the individual parts are simply abutted together, with "while" being forced to serve as the conjunction) makes interpretation tricky. But legal drafters have managed far worse.

The "neither/nor, and" combination would be much more readable. I'd recommend they find a copy-editor familiar with grammar :-)

Ewen