Adventures in the English language; AkaThe YGS thread

[Alan B]

'Gotten'

[aban57]

For some mysterious reason (honestly, I don't know why) I have never gotten the hang of Seinfeld. I tried watching a few episodes, I really tried to like the show, but always found it lame, boring and not funny. More often than not I don't bother clicking on its Youtube clips any more.

Same here.

[The_Piper]

I hated it for a while before being "forced" to watch it and the personalities became more familiar. It helps being familiar with the New York "atmosphere" indirectly through living in Boston. A parking spot is a big deal. Honestly I'm not blown away by the IT crowd clips I've seen either. Peddlestool is ok, good for this thread. different cultures have variation in what they find funny. Humor is often geographically relevant.
I like the Seinfeld pedestal scene better. Jerry says to George "you put them on a pedestal" (his girlfriends)
Kramer: "I put them in a dental chair."
That one really works for me.

[The_Piper]

'Gotten'

Bernie Sanders says "gunnew".

[Ironclad]

The county of Devon is the south of England has some grammar anomalies that are painful to hear. "Will you, or no", is my least favourite.
In court the defence lawyer came at me with a "can it be said.." line, to which I replied in the negative (he seemed disappointed), he followed up with, "and can it also be said..", which kinda hurt my head.

[The_Piper]

That reminds me of something that I do, and didn't know any other English speakers didn't until a friend from a different state pointed it out - Don't you like pizza? Wouldn't pizza right now be great? Couldn't you forget about that slop and split a pizza with me? Isn't that a good idea?
I think Brits do that too, don't you?

[Fallible]

All the time. Being the indirect round-the-houses types we are here, that construction (as a question) is more like a suggestion to someone than an outright intent or simple bluntly stating something. I didn't know the 'don't you like pizza?' was unusual though. What do Yanks normally say? Or do they just put the 'don't' in a different place? Eg. 'you don't like pizza?'

[felltoearth]

“Do you like pizza?” Would be more direct

[Fallible]

My interpretation might be wrong. When I hear 'don't you like pizza?' it comes after someone has expressed reluctance to get pizza- 'oh - don't you like pizza?' But now you've said that, maybe the way Piper said it is to get someone to join him in is liking of pizza. Well, this is all very confusing...

[romansh]

Don't you like pizza? … would imply some hesitancy regarding the pizza.

[aban57]

Don't you like pizza? … would imply some hesitancy regarding the pizza.

Or previous impression that you did like pizza.

[romansh]

Don't you like pizza? … would imply some hesitancy regarding the pizza.

Or previous impression that you did like pizza.

Yeah. I think a lot could depend on the inflexion of the statement.

A north American lack of n't that bugs me is I could care less.

[LucidFlight]

A north American lack of n't that bugs me is I could care less.

That's just plain wrong is what that is.

[The_Piper]

My interpretation might be wrong. When I hear 'don't you like pizza?' it comes after someone has expressed reluctance to get pizza- 'oh - don't you like pizza?' But now you've said that, maybe the way Piper said it is to get someone to join him in is liking of pizza. Well, this is all very confusing...

I messed up. Yes, the "don't you like pizza" could be switched to "you don't like pizza" and mean the same thing.
I meant to highlight the negative word for positive meaning. Wouldn't a pizza be great? My friend takes that as "A pizza wouldn't be great", when I mean that it would. "Isn't that a great idea"a means "do you think that is a great idea".
I'll have to pay attention to if Americans from other places say that. I know that Massachusetts-ers and Mainers do.

[The_Piper]

Don't you like pizza? … would imply some hesitancy regarding the pizza.

Or previous impression that you did like pizza.

Yeah. I think a lot could depend on the inflexion of the statement.

A north American lack of n't that bugs me is I could care less.

That one bugs me too. I've always said I couldn't care less.

[felltoearth]

Aren’t these pretzels making you thirsty?

[The_Piper]

Doesn't George really nail it later in the episode?

[Ironclad]

"They do though, don't they though", a line used in a 90s comedy skit, with a poor Liverpool accent. It makes sense, but is it grammatically correct?

[zulumoose]

[don't get me started]

My interpretation might be wrong. When I hear 'don't you like pizza?' it comes after someone has expressed reluctance to get pizza- 'oh - don't you like pizza?' But now you've said that, maybe the way Piper said it is to get someone to join him in is liking of pizza. Well, this is all very confusing...

A lot of the ways that conversations unfold is by the current speaker projecting forward (adumbrating) the expected response that will be forthcoming in the next speaker's turn (This is not limited to the question/answer adjacency pair, but also works for other paired turns such as assessment followed by agreement/disagreement, offer followed by accept or reject and so on.)

In English these kinds of negative polarity questions adumbrate an expected next turn that aligns with the expectation embedded in the prior turn. In the example sentence you gave, it is interesting that you used the word 'oh'. Far from being a minor and meaningless particle it fulfills a wide variety of functions in discourse. Its overarching role is described as a 'change of state token'
(Heritage. 1984).

In your example sentence the speaker is stating that they had an expectation that the recipient liked pizza, but some recent action or utterance suggested that this expectation is not valid, that is they (the speaker) has undergone a change of state, and the speaker wishes to confirm this newly-arrived at state of understanding. That is, the speaker is expecting a 'no' answer to the posed question.

'No' is usually a dispreferred answer (uttered after hestiation, restarts, mitigations, false agreements and so on). In this case, because the question is framed in this manner, the expected and forthcoming 'no' is NOT dispreferred and can be uttered at turn initial position without causing a threat to face.

In English, the response to these kinds of negative polarity questions pays no particular attention to the form of the questions and answers in accordance with the truth condition.
A: It's not raining is it?
B: (Lifts curtain and looks out of the window at blue sky)- 'No'.

A's question could be stated as 'Isn't it raining?/ It's raining, isn't it?/ Is it raining? If B looks out of the window and sees a blue sky, then the answer will be the same - No. (It isn't raining)

In Japanese it works a little bit differently.

The negative question 雨が降っていませんか　
[Ame (rain) ga (topic particle) futeimasu (falling) masen (negator) ka (Question particle)] Is translatable as 'Isn't it raining?'
The recipient of this question, looking out of the window and seeing blue skies answers 'Yes' rather than 'No'.

This is because the answer responds to the valency of the question rather than the truth condition.
In effect the answerer says 'Yes, you are right. It isn't raining.'
As you can imagine, the possibilities for misunderstandings between Japanese speakers and English speakers are many, whichever language they happen to be speaking.

Reference
Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement.In J.M. Atkinson, J. Heritage, & K.Oatley, (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, pp. 299-345. Cambridge University Press.