Thanks for the contribution! Intuitions on the meanings of sentences like these can be really tricky. One of the linguists I consulted on this at first felt like she agreed with the OP, but then after discussing it with me for a while came around to the interpretation that I had! (And I wasn't pushing her :)
As for the example you gave, my interpretation is that "you don't have to Y" That both are optional. I'm not sure I'm up to doing the lambda calculus on that one!
And here's another mind-blower: if I say "More people have been to Russia than I have," this sounds like a grammatical sentence, and you might even think you know what it means, but if you really think about it, it means nothing at all. \o/
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2017-03-12 10:38 pm (UTC)As for the example you gave, my interpretation is that "you don't have to Y" That both are optional. I'm not sure I'm up to doing the lambda calculus on that one!
And here's another mind-blower: if I say "More people have been to Russia than I have," this sounds like a grammatical sentence, and you might even think you know what it means, but if you really think about it, it means nothing at all. \o/