From: The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman [Second Edition]
I mentioned these sentences in my September 5, 2021 Reading Vlog, but now that I've started this Commonplace Book, I may as well put it here as well.
From page 195, which talks about the conditions in which different ways of forming negative sentences can sometimes have negative meanings.
***Quote***
Semantic nonequivalence can also occur in the interaction of not-versus no-negation with quantifiers:
All the guests didn't drink wine. ≠ All the guests drank no wine.
***ENDQUOTE--italics, boldface, and indentation all in the original***
I have puzzled over this for so long, and I still can't get it. Why are these sentences not semantically equal? It has to have something to do with the quantifier, right?
And then from page 197, there's another section I don't understand.
It's talking about the difference between not versus no. It says often they are the same, but sometimes there is a difference in meaning
****QUOTE****
When no-negation occurs, it is often in collocations such as see no reason; no more, no less; no longer; in implicit denials in existential constructions (There is no milk in the house) as compared with contrastive not-negation in explicit denials (There isn't any milk in the house);...
***ENDQUOTE****
Again, I don't get it. Why is one of these an "implicit denial" and the other an "explicit denial"? What is the difference in meaning?
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