{"id":602,"date":"2008-01-03T10:17:34","date_gmt":"2008-01-03T18:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/?p=602"},"modified":"2009-04-18T11:55:50","modified_gmt":"2009-04-18T18:55:50","slug":"when-not-doesnt-really-mean-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/2008\/01\/03\/when-not-doesnt-really-mean-not\/","title":{"rendered":"When &#8216;not&#8217; doesn&#8217;t really mean &#8216;not&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(Happy New Year!)<\/p>\n<p>Do these two sentences mean the same thing?<\/p>\n<p>1) I wonder if X isn&#8217;t better than Y.<br \/>\n2) I wonder if X is better than Y.<\/p>\n<p>On the surface, it&#8217;s a basic kind of statement (&#8220;I am comparing X and Y; X may be better, but I&#8217;m still thinking about it&#8221;) and they seem identical. At least superficially.<\/p>\n<p>I think the sentences imply different things, though. 1) is something I would say after having already chosen Y, and then re-evaluating X. 2) can be said either before or after a choice is made, but seems slightly more natural to say before.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, maybe sentence 1) is not quite Standard English and I&#8217;m just making all this up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Happy New Year!) Do these two sentences mean the same thing? 1) I wonder if X isn&#8217;t better than Y. 2) I wonder if X is better than Y. On the surface, it&#8217;s a basic kind of statement (&#8220;I am comparing X and Y; X may be better, but I&#8217;m still thinking about it&#8221;) and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[82,18],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snippet","tag-grammar","tag-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}