Please help! Negating conditional to some..not

Comments

• bananabo Core Member

  September 2019 1211 karma

  In answer choice B, the statement is “if the Japanese drive on the left side of the road, then they are not inclined to buy cars with left-side steering wheels.”

  The Lawgic form of that would be: if D → /I,
  Where D = “drive on the left side of the road” and I = “inclined to buy cars…”

  The negation of “/I “ is “I”, it doesn’t negate to “some”.

  I think you’re confused because “some” negates to “none”, but in that world, you’re talking about a quantity. “Some” means at least one, so the logical opposite (or the negation) is NOT at least one, or zero (which in English is “none”).
• CRLSUUUU Member

  September 2019 162 karma

  @bananabo

  I see, so when do we negate conditional to some then? Because if you look at this lesson here
  https://7sage.com/lesson/how-to-negate-statements-in-english/

  JY talks about negating from conditional to some:

  "All Jedi use the Force.

  Did you say “No Jedi use the Force?” That’s not right. To negate this statement, you’re denying the conditional relationship between the categories Jedi and Force users. Whereas the original statement is stipulating that the categories of J and F exist in a conditional relationship, you’re saying J is not sufficient for F (and F is not necessary for J). So, in English, it becomes an intersection statement.

  Some Jedi do not use the Force."

  I guess my question is when do we negate from conditional to some and when do we negate the necessary condition directly (like you did above by turning /I to I
• bananabo Core Member

  September 2019 1211 karma

  You use “some” when it says “All _____”. But you negate the necessary condition when it grammatically doesn’t make sense to use “some”.

  In the same lesson you linked, it says:

  “… if grammatically it doesn’t make sense to use “some,” you can fall back on the more general rule of “One can be [the sufficient] and not be [the necessary].” For example, “If the President endorses this bill, then it will pass.” Here, it clearly doesn’t make sense to use “some.” So, we fall back on the more general rule and say, “The President can endorse the bill and it could not pass.”

  So for answer choice B, the negation would be “The Japanese can drive on the left side of the road and be inclined to buy cars on the left side of the steering wheel”

  For the negation that you originally said, you assumed that “the Japanese” means “ALL Japanese”, which is not the case. When you put “the” in front of a noun, it is to indicate the identity of that noun. It does not indicate the quantity, so you can’t say “all”. If you go back to the section of the lesson that I just quoted, the last example says “the president”. “THE president” does not mean “ALL presidents”.
• 1 Like

  Cant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor

  September 2019 27900 karma

  You have the logic right here OP. What you’re missing is the grammar, and this is an outstanding example of how little grammatical quirks can fundamentally alter the meaning of a sentence. You’re reading the term as “Japanese people” which refers to individuals which make up the Japanese population. What it says is “The Japanese people” which refers to the population of Japanese nationals. These are pretty similar ideas, but they’re different. What we care about for our purposes is that “Japanese people” is plural, and “The Japanese people” is singular.
• 1 Like

  CRLSUUUU Member

  September 2019 162 karma

  @bananabo @"Cant Get Right" Ahh I get it now. Funny how that one little "the" makes such a big difference. Thank you for the explanation. I noticed someone else confused about this on that question's page. I'll go post your answers there too if you don't mind.