Two questions
Dec. 23rd, 2013 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissa1. Timprov and I were watching a very silly TED talk, and I wondered: does anybody but Timprov like 4 a.m.? And if so, do you like it from the staying up side or the getting up side?
2. As we know in Dar Williams’s “The Christians and the Pagans,” “When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said really no, don’t bother.” What does this mean in your idiolect? In mine it’s, um…it’s basically “I don’t really trust you, person I barely know, so get the hell out of my kitchen.” (There are other ways of saying things like, “I think it’s more important for you to get time with your uncle,” or, “I have a system that I’d just prefer to work within.”) Is that what it means in Dar’s home dialect/idiolect? What does it mean in yours?
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Date: 2013-12-24 06:21 am (UTC)My reaction to the "really" was similar to yours, assuming the speaker was ... under seventy, under sixty? Or in contact with younger people. For older speakers, and/or those from indirect speech cultures, I wouldn't assume any negative feeling; 'really' at the beginning of the sentence means really, truly, I'm not just being polite, I really mean it. Especially if it's the second go-around, after you've already politely offered once and she's already politely refused once.
If the 'really' comes later in the sentence -- "I really like to do my own washing" -- I might take it as intensive: "I very much prefer."