I think he taught History of Mathematics. There's another example I heard, which needs context to clarify.
Do native speakers really stress that second syllable in actual speech?Probably not news to anyone here, but in English, uncertainty about negations is a natural source of Janus sentences. . )She took the intended meaning from it, but the other one is there on purpose for ambiguity.In Irish, standard direct relative clause sentences are all Janus, unless an alternative construction (indirect relative for one meaning) is used. I can't claim to have ever heard 多少 in a context where it tilted towards meaning "fewer" rather than "more", but I can claim to have never heard 多少 be pronounced in a way that implies emphasis on either 多 or 少…Also, an ambiguity I once encountered on a linguistics exam during my undergrad years: "…discussing Chomsky at a minimum." "Get away with" is probably not the right word to express this. "To clarify," I noted (I'm paraphrasing a little here), "I'm referring to our exchange professor from England. The first example is from a discrepancy between standard and common non-standard negation:Two reasons why you might get in trouble hereabouts:The second is from a misnegation that has become an idiom.Another source of Janus sentences is of course Janus words such as "sanction" (see Hugh Rawson on Janus words here: But I don't remember seeing this humourous style of presentation of a Janus sentence before.The best example I can think of in English is the fact that these twoA long time ago some coworkers and I riffed for days on what we called Nothing Poems.The game was that the phrase, nothing verb, can be contra-ish to itself. Ludwig simply helps me pick the best words for any translation. It would be useful to examine a context in which this is the I know it's a totally different context, but what about constructions like the following?It seems to me that the third one would be possible in Mandarin.To clarify for those unfamiliar with Mandarin, 多好! @Jonathan Smith : yeah but it doesn't mean "how very few there are" there: if it did, they wouldn't say 谈不上 immediately prior. )This may not be quite parallel (I don't speak Mandarin), but a famous example in English is from a classic Saturday Night Live sketch: "You can't put too much water into a nuclear reactor." As to the specific case here, I am not a native speaker nor anywhere near as proficient in Modern Mandarin as many others here, so I can't really comment further. Sightly surprisingly, I'm unable to find the sketch online. She says:As the first link says, to “enjoin” someone is to order them to do or not do a particular thing, to “enjoin” an act is to require or prohibit it. means "Just how few people are there that have this opinion" as opposed to "Just what number of people are there that have this opinion"?Hi WSM, I think you're being overly prescriptive in your interpretation of the sentence I quoted, but it doesn't really matter; I was just trying to find an example where duo1 shao3 多少 clearly means 'how few?' For example:For an example in English, how about the first half of a quote often attributed to Dorothy Parker: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly", meaning either that it is well worth reading or that it is not at all worth reading.Fascinating discussion to skim through when you're a person like me who hasn't had much exposure to this level of detailed knowledge about languages/structures. ', 多漂亮! I block the roads and drift the fields with snow, I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.
Noel Hunt is saying what I said in my very first comment, although he does so in a far more explicit, intelligent, and professional manner.The point of my example of 多少 'how much' vs 多少！'how few' (VM) was to illustrate that two differentiated pronunciations/intonations are possible depending on the stress. I interpret " 网站链接就更谈不上有多少" literally (if unidiomatically) as "and as for web links, it's even harder to say that there are any [to speak of]". (Of course your new example is to be understood to contain 'how many'. One I saw recently was a financial advice piece on the Wall St. Journal's website with the headline "Why You Might Want to Leave a 401(k) With a Former Employer," where either "leave" in the sense "depart from" and "leave" in the sense "allow to continue without change" are plausible things you might want to do — indeed those are really your only two options. Are there examples of Chinese sentences that are ambiguous as to object and subject (or alternately as to whether the verb is active or passive)?And that's without getting into poetic traditions with lots of multilayered metaphors, so that in Classical Arabic "every word has four meanings: its meaning, the opposite, something to do with camels or horses, and something so obscene you'll have to look it up yourself", while in Classical Sanskrit "every word has four meanings: its meaning, the opposite, 'elephant', and a sex position".I don't think Bathrobe's explanation mentions that the key to the first pair is the contrast between duo1shao 多少 'a lot; whatever quantity; however much' and duo1 shao3 多 少 'however little' (two words).
"(The English professor in question really existed, and really taught History of Mathematics at our department – indeed, to the best of my knowledge, he still does; I'm not sure if he actually was an exchange professor, or whether there's even such a thing as an exchange professor.