Not for nothing

[Henry Flower]

Dear Henry,

I am not interested in being clever but I wanted you to understand that people who saw the GSG didn´t understand much of it, but still they had their opinions about it. What we used was an heuristic method, it has many advantages.

Cheers, Pierre

If that's what you wanted us to understand, great teacher, you failed to persuade. You failed also to demonstrate that there was anything to be gained by accepting that those who saw the GSG 'didn't understand much of it'.

'We' didn't use an heuristic method. You may have thought you were. Most of us have another name for your technique.

It has many advantages? In the hands of a genuine scholar or researcher, that might well be true. But that's not what happened here.

[GUT]

Dear David,

Amusing as it may be to read your posts about posts, I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished. The reflections you have posted in connection to my conclusions are just reflections on earlier statements with very varying opinions about this and that, where nothing of it has any relevance for the question about the idiom "Not for nothing" except from the pure reflecting of people on that expression, in the same way people in 1888 reflected on the GSG. The conclusions are there. Thanks for participating my dear David.

All the best, Pierre

Two points

"I have other things to do"

Gee I hope that means you're going to be too busy to bug us for a while.

"The exercise of this thread is finished"

Wonder who gave You the power to say when threads were finished or not

[Pierre]

'exercise' - the word a man uses when he had no point to make, failed to arouse anything but scorn, and wants to sound clever and in-control about his failure.

Dear Henry,

I am not interested in being clever but I wanted you to understand that people who saw the GSG didn´t understand much of it, but still they had their opinions about it. What we used was an heuristic method, it has many advantages.

Cheers, Pierre

[Henry Flower]

I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished.

'exercise' - the word a man uses when he had no point to make, failed to arouse anything but scorn, and wants to sound clever and in-control about his failure.

[Albert]

....and the winner is...David (as usual).

[David Orsam]

I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished.

My dear boy, you have no idea how pleased I am to hear you say that. I look forward now to you doing all the other things that you have to do and not hearing from you again for some considerable time.

Mind you, it doesn't affect my mark for your post #73 which remains at a very disappointing E minus.

[andy1867]

Goes on forever this doesn't it?
Ive read Pierres posts, and I am in no way an expert, but Ive bought enough crappy books on the subject to know when someones simply ripping it out of you so to speak....I boil it all down to ..
"Who would you have a pint with?" at this point of the argument..
I can imagine walkin' into a pub and Mr Osram asking me
"What would you like to drink?"
I say.."A pint of bitter"
he gets me a pint of bitter..
Walking into a pub and and Pierre asking me "what I want to drink"
I say "A pint of bitter"
He asks me "Why...whats a matter with cider,? was I hit on the head by an apple when I was a kid..whats the matter with lager, why not whisky,? do you hate the Scots..etc etc etc
Pierre your first post on here was regarding a suspect you had, since then, you have simply tried to pick the brains of the more knowledgeable on here
...I know that...cos I do it...
but I do it openly, I admit I know very little, but do have an interest, and to be fair, most on here are quite happy to pass on what they know, where I might have gone wrong, and what ive got mixed up
you can't seem to bring yourself to do that, thats why you go round and round in circles, with every post virtually ending in a question .....
There is no shame in saying you know nowt..Its the internet...leaves no bruises at all....
"My names Andy...I know very little about Jack the ripper"
C'mon Pierre....join the club, it will be a massive weight offa yer shoulders....


Or...


Name your suspect, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war

[Henry Flower]

Pierre, it's actually very simple - or at least it should be to someone who studies the 'cultural production of literature' and has read the most obscure plays of Tennyson.

What we understand as a double negative is in short an error. "I haven't done nothing wrong" - where the person should correctly be saying "I haven't done anything wrong". It's a common error among certain classes.

'Not for nothing' is NOT what we would usually call a double negative because it is not an error. Indeed, it is rarely used by the sort of person who would make the error of using a double negative. It is an accepted and oft-used phrase. It has a touch of poetry about it.

* Double negatives are usually errors of grammar.

* 'Not for nothing' is more often used by the educated and is not described as a double negative because it is not an error.

* 'Not for nothing' has nothing to do with the Whitechapel Murders.

It really couldn't be any clearer.

If you don't understand THAT, you shouldn't be on the boards, you should go play somewhere more suited to your level.

[Pierre]

But, my dear boy, I was (in my #81) replying to your #73, in which there were no questions posed by you at all. You are now referring to your #79. At the time I started typing my #81, your #79 didn't even exist and even I, with all my abilities, am not able to anticipate questions that haven't yet been asked.

Dear David,

Amusing as it may be to read your posts about posts, I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished. The reflections you have posted in connection to my conclusions are just reflections on earlier statements with very varying opinions about this and that, where nothing of it has any relevance for the question about the idiom "Not for nothing" except from the pure reflecting of people on that expression, in the same way people in 1888 reflected on the GSG. The conclusions are there. Thanks for participating my dear David.

All the best, Pierre

[David Orsam]

There you are again, the two questions. They are in the post. No absence.

But, my dear boy, I was (in my #81) replying to your #73, in which there were no questions posed by you at all. You are now referring to your #79. At the time I started typing my #81, your #79 didn't even exist and even I, with all my abilities, am not able to anticipate questions that haven't yet been asked.

[Pierre]

Oh my dear boy, there were no questions in your post, merely an unintelligible purported "Conclusion II".

It was the absence of any questions which explains why I did not answer them.

If we take a true double negative like "I’m not doing nothing", the speaker here is trying to convey the impression that they are not doing anything and thus should have said "I’m not doing anything".

Could you please tell us what sort of syntactic function you are trying to describe here?

That’s because it has a distinct meaning unconnected to the double negatives.

Can you explain to us the syntactic definition of your idea here?

There you are again, the two questions. They are in the post. No absence.

Pierre

[Henry Flower]

David's post was thoroughly coherent, Pierre. It was calm and considered, took its structure from your own post, and I had no trouble following it.

If you found it incoherent I can only suggest you come back to the boards when you have completed some remedial classes in basic English, as you're evidently having trouble reading structured arguments in very clear, concise prose.

Good luck! We'll see you back here next year, yes? Happy learning!

HF

[Henry Flower]

It is in his responses to David that Pierre usually seems to let his mask slip, and we can all see that he is not a scholar, and more importantly, (or at least it SHOULD be more important to the moderators of this site) he is not an honest contributor.

Pierre is not an honest contributor. He is deceitful, and when his twisting and artifice is dissected in irrefutable detail he resorts to more lies, bluster, and name-calling.

I don't know why he's still here. Is he hoping that perhaps David Orsam will at some point die, so that he can post more of his baseless time-wasting bull without having it so thoroughly exposed for what it is?

[GUT]

Oh my dear boy, there were no questions in your post, merely an unintelligible purported "Conclusion II".

It was the absence of any questions which explains why I did not answer them.

As usual you're meant to guess what he means

[Abby Normal]

You are wasting your time, David. You did not manage to answer the questions but instead you write this incoherent post.

Give it up Pier. Time to cut your loses.

Or is that lodges?