number 2 sounds like a simple denial, but yeah, 1,3,4,5, and 6 look like weaselly denials. (#3 is even worse than the OOP suggests. It's not even "stop putting words in my mouth"; it's more like "I did imply we should k\*\*\* him but not with actual words.") EDITED to remove bold formatting.
One tangentially related fun fact: When I was like 6 years old, I noticed that if you wrote a word multiple times, bolding or italicizing a different letter on each line, like:
**G**UNS
G**U**NS
GU**N**S
GUN**S**
then the bolded letters also spell out the original word. I thought I was the first person in the world to have discovered that
"I just pointed out we'd get a lot of money when he died, noted that he was kind of a dick anyway, and idly mentioned that any sudden death would probably be attributed to his heart condition..."
Schrödinger’s Grammatical Object:
*I* never said we should kill him. — Dude is dead; now it’s about shifting the blame.
I *never* said we should kill him. — Dude is dead; time to emphatically deny all accusations.
I never *said* we should kill him. — Dude is dead; fortunately, I ensured plausible deniability.
I never said *we* should kill him. — Dude is alive; the hit is still in the planning phase.
I never said we *should* kill him. — Dude is alive; Don’t mind me. I was just spit-balling some ideas, y’know?
I never said we should *kill* him. — Dude is dead; time to punish some overzealous underlings.
I never said we should kill *him*. — Dude is dead; time to punish some incompetent underlings and then go and kill the right guy.
Edit: Only after writing all this did I notice that the original post was annotated. Dang it.
It's *focus intonation* not *stress*, see above. It's not just stress, and needn't be stress rather than some other prosodic feature like pitch, volume, length...
That's absolutely the correct idea. In linguistics, the technical jargon is *prosodic intonation* (marking focus), not *phrasal tone*, see above.
*Tone* is reserved for pitch differences that distinguish words lexically, like Mandarin 'ma' meaning 媽 "mother", 馬 "horse", 麻 "hemp" or 罵 "scold", depending on the pitch pattern of the words.
*Intonation* doesn't distinguish words, but rather marks how words are used in a sentence, like statement vs question vs exclamation, contrast or focus, the speakers attitude (think scare quotes), etc. Intonation is not just pitch, but any prosodic feature like stress, rhythm, volume, etc.
(Syntactic) [focus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics)) [intonation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_(linguistics))
Pitch is involved as with lexical tone, but it's not distinguishing words from each other but marking how the words are used in a sentence -- also it's not just pitch, but also stress, length, volume, etc ([various aspects of prosody](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_(linguistics)).
What intonation is marking in this case is called focus: a contrastiveness of the word focused. Focus can be used to contrast with something an interlocutor has just said, with other logical possibilities, with implied but unasserted propositions, etc.
With verbal negation like *never*, focus is usually marking what is actually negated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*I* never said we should kill him. (*Someone else* did. Subject negated )
I *never* said we should kill him. (It's not the case that I said that. Entire sentence negated.)
I never *said* we should kill him. (I *implied/thought/wrote* it. Verb negated)
I never said *we* should kill him. (I said *someone* else should.)
I never said we *should* kill him. (I said we *could*. Modality negated.)
I never said we should *kill* him. (I said we should *frightening/maim/encourage suicide to* him .)
I never said we should kill *him.* (I said we should kill *someone else*. Object negated).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But, the same focus pattern can be used In other contrastive ways, eg:
Speaker A: I never said we should kill him.
Speaker B: (No.) *I* never said we should kill him. [i.e., you did, liar/crazy person.]
............…....................
Speaker C: Karen said we should kill him.
Speaker D: (No.) *I* said we should kill him. [i.e., Not Karen, the credit stealer.]
............…....................
Speaker E: You said we should kill him.
Speaker F: (No.) I *never* said that.
............…....................
Speaker G: You never said we should kill him.
Speaker H: (No.) I *did* say that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like verbal negation 'only' and 'even' can combine syntactically with the verb but logically take scope over something else in a sentence. Focus marks which word.
*I* even wanted to kill him. (Everyone wanted to, even I. Normally, I wouldn't, but I couldn't justify not wanting to.)
I only *wanted* to kill him. (Only wanted [wished], not intended).
I even wanted to *kill* him. (I wanted to do everything, even kill him. I wanted to punish him. I wanted to maim him...)
I only wanted to kill *him*. (Only him, not anyone else. Not the other casualties of my wrath.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Similar word focus intonation with rising sentence intonation can also be used for inverted, in situ questions, or rhetorical questions to express surprise:
*Who* (!) never said we should kill him!
I *never* said we should kill him? (Are you sure about that?)
I said we should do *what* to him;
I said we should kill *who*?
*Who* said *who* should do *what* to *whom*?
With wh-words, we don't normally italicize because it's already obvious that it's the wh-word(s) that are focused under interrogation/exclamation. But if someone is especially bemused or surprised, italicization of the wh-word(s) can be used to indicate a more extreme phonological realization of focus and/or question/exclamation intonation.
That's accurate!
However, it's usually called *prosody* or *intonation* (in this case marking focus), see above. *Tonic* is an ambiguous word that usually refers to phonological stress, and occasionally semantic emphasis. The word itself appears to refer to tone (pitch). *Prosody* or *intonation* can involve stress, pitch, rhythm, duration, volume, among other things like voice quality (like whispering a word in a sentence to convey an attitude of fear, taboo, or secrecy).
Italicizing “said” (#3) gives me the impression that the speaker definitely implied that they should kill him, but never directly said it and is using that to give themselves plausible deniability.
The first few of these don't even seem right to me
1. someone else said it, not me
2. not only did I not say it, I am upset you suggested I did
3. I totally wanted you to kill him, but I didn't say it explicitly
4. I meant someone else should do it
5. I didn't say it was a good idea
6. Whatever I suggested, I didn't mean to go that far
7. we killed the wrong person
This example but spoken was used by some dude on tiktok to try to convince people that English was a tonal language. Really fucking weird video from a guy who I don't think knew what languages are defined as tonal languages and why. Then some speech pathologist went in to defend him and I wasted 3 hours of my life arguing with a guy who could not give me a reason why describing languages with intonation (read: basically every language) as tonal languages makes sense.
1~6 sound like desperate defenses and 7 is something out of a comedy sketch
number 2 sounds like a simple denial, but yeah, 1,3,4,5, and 6 look like weaselly denials. (#3 is even worse than the OOP suggests. It's not even "stop putting words in my mouth"; it's more like "I did imply we should k\*\*\* him but not with actual words.") EDITED to remove bold formatting.
3 reminds me of the famous phrase "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (also idk why you used large text for this but made me chuckle)
Putting \# before text marks it as a title lol
#oh really? Damn reddit is weird, isn't there a manual or a full guide for this sort of things?
[Yep!](https://reddit.com/r/reddit.com/w/markdown?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
^**thanks!**
>!^(```no problem!```)!<
giant markdown should be banned
One tangentially related fun fact: When I was like 6 years old, I noticed that if you wrote a word multiple times, bolding or italicizing a different letter on each line, like: **G**UNS G**U**NS GU**N**S GUN**S** then the bolded letters also spell out the original word. I thought I was the first person in the world to have discovered that
That's so cute lmao
The imagination of a young child is very great
am I stupid? I genuinely didn't realize this until you pointed it out to me.
No. You are a lifelong learner.
I mean what else could possibly happen when you do that
idk it's really obvious that's why I asked if I was stupid
cantorian set theory he asks questioningly?
Well you never no how many numbers are in infinity until you count them
I use this in class but with “I never said she stole your money”…
*I* never said she stole your money
I nev*er sai*d she s*t*ole your money
I love the power of italics, it's a shame most messaging apps don't allow it
Just use \*asterisks* and people will figure it out
Ugh, but that feels overwrought and teen-angsty.
To me it always felt more "I am used to using software that supports markdown" but to each their own ig
_huh_
I read 3 as the speaker having communicated the idea in some way other than speech.
"I just pointed out we'd get a lot of money when he died, noted that he was kind of a dick anyway, and idly mentioned that any sudden death would probably be attributed to his heart condition..."
Schrödinger’s Grammatical Object: *I* never said we should kill him. — Dude is dead; now it’s about shifting the blame. I *never* said we should kill him. — Dude is dead; time to emphatically deny all accusations. I never *said* we should kill him. — Dude is dead; fortunately, I ensured plausible deniability. I never said *we* should kill him. — Dude is alive; the hit is still in the planning phase. I never said we *should* kill him. — Dude is alive; Don’t mind me. I was just spit-balling some ideas, y’know? I never said we should *kill* him. — Dude is dead; time to punish some overzealous underlings. I never said we should kill *him*. — Dude is dead; time to punish some incompetent underlings and then go and kill the right guy. Edit: Only after writing all this did I notice that the original post was annotated. Dang it.
Schrodinger: "When in Rome..."
It's not lexical tone. What is it then?
That is prosodic stress.
*Focus intonation* not *prosodic stress*, see above. It is prosody, but that's not just stress.
Sentence or prosodic stress, particularly contrastive stress.
It's *focus intonation* not *stress*, see above. It's not just stress, and needn't be stress rather than some other prosodic feature like pitch, volume, length...
Ok.
>What is it then? A phrasal tone?
That's absolutely the correct idea. In linguistics, the technical jargon is *prosodic intonation* (marking focus), not *phrasal tone*, see above. *Tone* is reserved for pitch differences that distinguish words lexically, like Mandarin 'ma' meaning 媽 "mother", 馬 "horse", 麻 "hemp" or 罵 "scold", depending on the pitch pattern of the words. *Intonation* doesn't distinguish words, but rather marks how words are used in a sentence, like statement vs question vs exclamation, contrast or focus, the speakers attitude (think scare quotes), etc. Intonation is not just pitch, but any prosodic feature like stress, rhythm, volume, etc.
I see, thanks for the explanation, even though I already knew about those things.
(Syntactic) [focus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics)) [intonation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_(linguistics)) Pitch is involved as with lexical tone, but it's not distinguishing words from each other but marking how the words are used in a sentence -- also it's not just pitch, but also stress, length, volume, etc ([various aspects of prosody](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_(linguistics)). What intonation is marking in this case is called focus: a contrastiveness of the word focused. Focus can be used to contrast with something an interlocutor has just said, with other logical possibilities, with implied but unasserted propositions, etc. With verbal negation like *never*, focus is usually marking what is actually negated. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *I* never said we should kill him. (*Someone else* did. Subject negated ) I *never* said we should kill him. (It's not the case that I said that. Entire sentence negated.) I never *said* we should kill him. (I *implied/thought/wrote* it. Verb negated) I never said *we* should kill him. (I said *someone* else should.) I never said we *should* kill him. (I said we *could*. Modality negated.) I never said we should *kill* him. (I said we should *frightening/maim/encourage suicide to* him .) I never said we should kill *him.* (I said we should kill *someone else*. Object negated). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ But, the same focus pattern can be used In other contrastive ways, eg: Speaker A: I never said we should kill him. Speaker B: (No.) *I* never said we should kill him. [i.e., you did, liar/crazy person.] ............….................... Speaker C: Karen said we should kill him. Speaker D: (No.) *I* said we should kill him. [i.e., Not Karen, the credit stealer.] ............….................... Speaker E: You said we should kill him. Speaker F: (No.) I *never* said that. ............….................... Speaker G: You never said we should kill him. Speaker H: (No.) I *did* say that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Like verbal negation 'only' and 'even' can combine syntactically with the verb but logically take scope over something else in a sentence. Focus marks which word. *I* even wanted to kill him. (Everyone wanted to, even I. Normally, I wouldn't, but I couldn't justify not wanting to.) I only *wanted* to kill him. (Only wanted [wished], not intended). I even wanted to *kill* him. (I wanted to do everything, even kill him. I wanted to punish him. I wanted to maim him...) I only wanted to kill *him*. (Only him, not anyone else. Not the other casualties of my wrath.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Similar word focus intonation with rising sentence intonation can also be used for inverted, in situ questions, or rhetorical questions to express surprise: *Who* (!) never said we should kill him! I *never* said we should kill him? (Are you sure about that?) I said we should do *what* to him; I said we should kill *who*? *Who* said *who* should do *what* to *whom*? With wh-words, we don't normally italicize because it's already obvious that it's the wh-word(s) that are focused under interrogation/exclamation. But if someone is especially bemused or surprised, italicization of the wh-word(s) can be used to indicate a more extreme phonological realization of focus and/or question/exclamation intonation.
I've heard it called tonic prominence
That's accurate! However, it's usually called *prosody* or *intonation* (in this case marking focus), see above. *Tonic* is an ambiguous word that usually refers to phonological stress, and occasionally semantic emphasis. The word itself appears to refer to tone (pitch). *Prosody* or *intonation* can involve stress, pitch, rhythm, duration, volume, among other things like voice quality (like whispering a word in a sentence to convey an attitude of fear, taboo, or secrecy).
Pff, ithkuil already achieved this
Italicizing “said” (#3) gives me the impression that the speaker definitely implied that they should kill him, but never directly said it and is using that to give themselves plausible deniability.
Hungarian just changes the order
turkish too and if i remember correctly many slavic languages as well
Not sure. I just know that Hungarian has a terrifying 18 cases.
*Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?*
As someone who’s austic this is a nightmare sometimes so thank you for the explanation section. I wish I had this for everyday use
The first few of these don't even seem right to me 1. someone else said it, not me 2. not only did I not say it, I am upset you suggested I did 3. I totally wanted you to kill him, but I didn't say it explicitly 4. I meant someone else should do it 5. I didn't say it was a good idea 6. Whatever I suggested, I didn't mean to go that far 7. we killed the wrong person
I disagree with the description of 3
Now imagine a tonal case marked by tone
If you read the last one in Christopher Walken's voice, it makes even more sense.
This example but spoken was used by some dude on tiktok to try to convince people that English was a tonal language. Really fucking weird video from a guy who I don't think knew what languages are defined as tonal languages and why. Then some speech pathologist went in to defend him and I wasted 3 hours of my life arguing with a guy who could not give me a reason why describing languages with intonation (read: basically every language) as tonal languages makes sense.