Positive or negative?

shuntang · Post by **shuntang** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 5:33 pm

What is the difference between the two examples, or are they the same?

Ex1: Healthy Traveler Illness may strike till you're already home.
Ex2: Healthy Traveler Illness may not strike till you're already home.

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 6:48 pm

Well, from what I can see, ex1 only makes sense if you mean to indicate that it "keeps striking regularly" (repitition) till you're already home, although I'd admit that it does sound strange.

Ex1: Healthy Traveler Illness may strike till you're already home.
The medication may work till you're already back at your office0.
Headaches may bother you till you've reached puberty.

--------|-----------|-----------------{}-------------> time line to the future
(strike) (strike) (arrival home)

The second example warns that the disease could take up to the a certain ending time to activate (perhaps too late), or the first action might not happen until the second is complete. Also by the sounds of it, that action might only happen once

Ex2: Healthy Traveler Illness may not strike till you're already home.
His parachute might not come out till it's too late.
Signs of arthritis might not appear until the age of 62.

--------------{}---------------|------------------->time line to the future
(arrival at home) (strike)

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 7:31 pm

What a lovely, clear explanation!

Larry Latham

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 8:11 pm

Thank you Larry.

The only question I have in my mind is regarding the example 1: does it sound repetitive to you in this sentence? As if it may strike more than once or many times till you're already home? Or is that just me?

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 11:56 pm

To tell you the truth, William, I hadn't thought of your interpretation until you brought it up. But it makes perfect sense to me now that you have pointed it out.

Larry Latham

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:52 am

Are we talking about Healthy Traveler Illness (whatever that is - a form of traveller's diarrhoea?) or a warning to the Healthy Traveler about when illness may stirke?

Anyway the two meanings are different. The first is saying that the illness may strike at any time until you are safely home.
The second is saying that the illness may strike even after you have arrived home

shuntang · Post by **shuntang** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:19 am

I am afraid I have a difficulty to interpret my question. I even have a difficutly to ask about the point. Something in until-clause structure bothers me. For example someone here said this:

ExC: "I hadn't thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."

Does it mean even you brought it up, I hadn’t thought of your interpretation. It seems illogical, judging from the whole thing here. It seems to me the person was saying the positive:

ExD: "I had thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."

Do they mean the same thing? Or is ExD completely unacceptable in such situation as we know?

shuntang · Post by **shuntang** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:50 am

Wjserson,

You wrote: Well, from what I can see, ex1 only makes sense if you mean to indicate that it "keeps striking regularly" (repitition) till you're already home, although I'd admit that it does sound strange.

Ex1: Healthy Traveler Illness may strike till you're already home.
The medication may work till you're already back at your office0.
Headaches may bother you till you've reached puberty.

--------|-----------|---------------{}-----------> time line to the future
(strike) (strike) (arrival home)

I am afraid your abundance of examples have confused your explanation. They do not exactly refer to "time line to the future", but a pause in certain time in the future.

It seems objective for you to use "the future" to include all the time indications in your examples under Ex1. But if we inspect them closely, as in example by example, we may say it is not the case, for instance:
Ex1C: Headaches may bother you till you've reached puberty.
== It means the headaches may NOT bother you if you have reached puberty, at least some time in your puberty. Given the till/until-clause, the positive structure of Ex1C indicates a negative, so to speak.

As I have admitted, I am not so clear what I am looking for. Given the till/until-clause, all the positive examples in Ex1 imply a negative in a certain time, the reason of which I still don't know. Therefore I asked.

(I have rephrased my reply for a few times because I am gradually getting clearer about the point where I don't understand.)

Shun Tang

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:31 pm

"headaches may bother you until puberty" means that you will not have headhaches after puberty, but quite possibly will have them up to that date.

"headhaches may not bother you until after puberty" means that it is more likely they will bother you after puberty tnan before.

As you have said, you are not asking the questions very clearly so we can't answer clearly.

But affirmative verb + until phrase suggests a negative after the until.

negative verb + until phrase suggests possible before and after the until,

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:36 pm

As to the why, simple. Until is the point of time at which the action previous to it stops. So if the action is positive before it wil be negative afterwards.

They played football until nighttime.
They made passionate love until it was time to get up and go back to work.
He led an adventurous life until he was eaten by a crododile[/i]

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 1:14 pm

There is also that great big whopping "...until AFTER puberty" helping out a lot in your examples, Stephen!

This is the kind of item that might not appear in many sentences, thus making them harder to understand, but dictionaries, teachers etc can obviously add explanation, paraphrase etc as necessary to help make things clearer.

There is also an alternative to the second of your two sentences:

"Headaches may not bother you until (after) puberty" > Headaches may bother/start bothering you after puberty (but probably won't before then).

I myself find it more natural here (and certainly less mind-bending) to imagine saying "from when they MAY start" (without the need for a negative) vs. "until whenever, they WON'T be a problem" (a clear prediction/reassurance), but I do appreciate that your original sentence does leave open the possibility that headaches MIGHT conceivably be a problem sometime before puberty (if that is indeed what the speaker wants to imply or actually means to "say") - and one could imagine one of Wjserson's sentences being put differently: "The medication/antidote may (will?) NOT work/take effect till/for... (so administer it ASAP after e.g. the snakebite)!".

However, the nuance seems to be much more that puberty will be the turning point from which the onset of e.g. a serious illness will occur, and that because it could be a while until puberty, there is a danger that the future potential sufferer could become complacent and forget their impending problem (which is why the future time is being stressed to them now). Wjserson kind of said the same thing, in a way. Phew!

shuntang · Post by **shuntang** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 2:16 pm

These examples are so designed that main actions have to be inevitably changed:

They played football until nighttime.
They made passionate love until it was time to get up and go back to work.
He led an adventurous life until he was eaten by a crododile

However, usually, examples do not agree with "UNTIL is point of time at which the action previous to it stops. So if the action is positive before it wil be negative afterwards."

Ex: This very important task remained unchanged up until these days and it still is most emphasized among our members.
Ex: Both Surface water and groundwater will be studied with focusing on the main problems found before the first week of last April and until these days. All the information is collected from employees in the Ministry of water resources and the governance in the main cities of IRAQ.
Ex: More than 60 years later the worldwide debate aroused on March 23, 1989 as the chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann published similar experiments with the same materials in use. This debate has not come to an end until these days.
Ex: The name Kouvola the village probably got after a settler called Kouvo. The beautiful countryside has almost completely remained until these days, and it is only a few kilometres away from the town of Kouvola.
Ex: However the truth is, that even until these days, I can still feel the stab of intermittent pain as if some pebbles were lodge within the corner of my heart.

Actually, as above, UNTIL usually doesn’t imply a point of time at which the action previous to it stops. But sometimes it does. And therefore we find the following pair interesting:
ExC: "I hadn't thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."
ExD: "I had thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."
Both sentences say that now you brought it up, I thought about it. If this is the case, the positive equates the negative, which is illogical. Or shall we say, in this situation we understand, ExD is unacceptable?

Shun Tang

shuntang · Post by **shuntang** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 2:56 pm

However, the nuance seems to be much more that puberty will be the turning point from which the onset of e.g. a serious illness will occur, and that because it could be a while until puberty, there is a danger that the future potential sufferer could become complacent and forget their impending problem (which is why the future time is being stressed to them now). Wjserson kind of said the same thing, in a way.

The said phenomenon in this thread happens also in past situations. It doesn’t always have to do with the future alone.
Ex: He refused to go till he had seen all the papers.
Ex: He slept until his clothes had been soaked with the mist.
Ex: "I hadn't thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."

The timeline to the future is not sufficient at all, obviously.

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 3:01 pm

Is it just me or is this another case of "ask a question than argue and refuse the response"? The differences between your two original sentences are nor complicated nor difficult to explain. You yourself, Shuntang, probably already knew the difference. Why did I volounteer to answer first?

SJ, let him have it....

shuntang · Post by **shuntang** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 3:33 pm

Wjserson,

You wrote:The differences between your two original sentences are nor complicated nor difficult to explain.

I beg your pardon. Are they easy? Really with a timeline to the future?

I have asked this for several times:

ExC: "I hadn't thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."
ExD: "I had thought of your interpretation until you brought it up."
Both sentences say that now you brought it up, I thought about it. If this is the case, the positive equates the negative, which is illogical. Or shall we say, in this situation we understand, ExD is unacceptable?

Why don’t you say just yes or no, so I will agree it is really not complicated?

Maybe it is time for personal description. I will not get into it this time.

Shun Tang