Does BUT negates what precedes?

[Guest guest]

For some time I have thought about that. In many posts by Doc John I

saw that he was drawing people's attention to their statements when

they used " but " . He said that whenever they used " but " , it negated

their previous statement.

 

Butt-wise (a typo), I saw James K use " and " whenever I would have

used " but " . English isn't my native language, and yet (hum... I

suspect the problem is the same with " yet " ...)I believe in

Chomsky's " Universal Grammar " the song remains the same whether in

English with " BUT " or in French with " MAIS " . So what's my problem?

 

The problem I have is whenever I use " but " I wonder " Do I want to

negate the previous statement? " , and the answer is always NO (fifth

finger of the left hand twitching, fifth finger of the right hand

lifting: " ALWAYS?! " , yes I'm currently re-reading GENIE Laborde). So

not always. Say 9 times out of 10.

 

Still (aargh!) generally (...)when I mean " but " what I really mean

is... negating the presupposed which is attached to the previous

statement.

 

e.g. I recently told my girlfriend " I love you but for the moment

we can't live together " . When I analyse my statement, there's no

doubt I love her, what I'm negating is all that is generally

associated with " loving " : people around 30 who are in love MUST

think about their future, it's time for them to get together and

raise a happy family, blabla. Saying BUT allows me to make a slimmer

word out of a fat one (see Genie Laborde again)

 

Isn't it clear? WHEN I say to a girl " I want to f**k you, but I

don't have any condoms " am I negating what precedes? Hell no! it's a

way of pacing her desire which certainly presupposes the use of a

latex device whenever engaging in beasting-with-two-backing (not

sure whether I'm quoting Shakespeare or Allan Watts).

 

But ;-) what do you people think?

 

Pierre