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Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010not much else
The quoted ones previusly are what I changed to make it simple. I'm afraid that this act might have made the sentences unclear ane even unnatural. Let me put the original sentences from a novel. "Yes. More assumptions," I mutter, remembering Chandonne's claiming he drove one of those green motorcycles to clean Paris sidewalks, doubting the story but not much else any longer. (The Last Precinct, P. Corwell) context: they(the speaker and her associates) are discussing the possiblity of Chandonne's driving any vehicle. They had assumed that he didn't drive a car, but if so, they are beginning to feel that there are things not fitting in what happened with his crime. question: I couldn't get clear the meaning "but not much less". What is not much else any longer? 1) His story is not muclh else any longer. 2) I doubted it no much else any longer. > The quoted ones previusly are what I changed to make it simple. > I'm afraid that this act might have made the sentences unclear ane [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > question: I couldn't get clear the meaning "but not much less". > What is not much else any longer? The reliability of most of the other factors involved are no longer in any doubt (is how I read that) >> "Yes. More assumptions," I mutter, remembering Chandonne's claiming he >> drove [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >The reliability of most of the other factors involved are no longer in >any doubt (is how I read that). Yes, it's "doubting the story, but not [doubting] much else any longer". Regards Jonathan On Feb 13, 9:53 am, "Jonathan Morton" <jonathan.mortonbutignorethisp...@btinternet.com> wrote: > >> "Yes. More assumptions," I mutter, remembering Chandonne's claiming he > >> drove [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > Jonathan Though what I couldn't grasp from that piece was whether Chandonne drove whilst doubting some story or other, or that it is elements of Chandonne's story that is in doubt. On 2月13日, 午後6:03, aquachimp <aquach...@aquachimp.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: > On Feb 13, 9:53 am, "Jonathan Morton" > [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > > - 引用テキストを表示 - It's the speaker doubting the story by Chandonne. > Let me put the original sentences from a novel. > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > context: they(the speaker and her associates) are discussing the > possiblity of Chandonne's driving any vehicle. . . . > question: I couldn't get clear the meaning "but not much less". > What is not much else any longer? Reconsider: Cornwell writes: > . . . doubting the story but not much else any longer. We could rephrase: . . . doubting this story but doubting little else any longer. This would be clearer (that the speaker doubts Chandonne's claim to have driven a Paris street cleaner but does not any longer doubt that he could drive a car) but less vernacular. Ordinarily (1) we would not repeat the word doubting as above, (2) the American ear prefers "not much else" to "little else."  SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) > The quoted ones previusly are what I changed to make it simple. > I'm afraid that this act might have made the sentences unclear ane [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > 1) His story is not muclh else any longer. > 2) I doubted it no much else any longer. The speaker used to doubt the story about the green motorcycle, and other details of what Chandonne said. Now, the speaker still doubts that story, but believes most of the other things Chandonne has said (or the things that have been said about him). The speaker doubts that story, but "[does] not [doubt] much else (= many other things) any longer (= now)." That's a little bit simplified ("any longer", after a negative verb, really carries the idea "before, but not now"), but I hope it makes the meaning clear. > The quoted ones previusly are what I changed to make it simple. > I'm afraid that this act might have made the sentences unclear ane [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > 1) His story is not muclh else any longer. > 2) I doubted it no much else any longer. The key is the construction that the phrase is in. He doubted [[the story] but [not much else]]. That is, "not much else" is conjoined with "the story" by the conjunction "but" (which means the same thing logically as "and"). So "not much else" has to be a noun phrase, and another direct object of "doubt", like "the story". Given that, "else" has to unpack into "other things", and "much" would in that case become "many", given the shift from singular mass to plural count. So unpacking the conjunction reduction, the full root sentence would be He doubted the story but he didn't doubt many other things. Which "things" he didn't doubt (which, as a double negative, resolves into "believed") would be the same kind of things as "the story", and then you can resume the rest of the text, refreshed from your little sand-trap experience. -John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile. 'Art is long, life is short, crises are fleeting, experience is perilous, and decisions are difficult.' -- Hippocrates |
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