Adjuncts

Movement out of negative islands

That's how I do not practice that step.
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 5 May 2013.)

Oh my God, look how much I'm not doing this.
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 6 June 2011.)

... to see how I live, and how I don't live.
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 24 April 2011.)

I sat next to my then two-year-old son, who slept as serenely as I hadn't for years.
(AA Grapevine, January 2006. 55.)

This magnifies geometrically the number of places something isn't when you forget where you filed it.
(David Allen. 2001. Getting things done. Penguin. 98. Emphasis in original.)

ATTN: If clicking doesn't work (as it sometimes doesn't) please visit: http://www.freemerchant.com/mailmgmt.htm …
(juliag@shore.net to beatrice@babel.ling.upenn.edu, 29 March 2001.)

How is it that things are coming from ourselves? And how can we use this phenomenon to our advantage?

I think the most important thing to talk about first is how these things don't come from ourselves.
(Michael Roach. 2000. The diamond cutter. Doubleday. 46. Emphasis in original.)

Before we look at how it [V2—BES] could be lost, let's look at how it couldn't be lost.
(Charles Yang, 22 May 2000. DIGS 6, University of Maryland. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

When do you get it [movement from Asp to Mood—BES], and when don't you get it?
(Anthony Kroch, 30 June 1999. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

Anansi tales are sometimes used to teach African children how not to behave.
(Display at the Free Library of Philadelphia, January 1999. Emphasis in original.)

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
(From 'Worst analogies (taken from high school papers),' email posting via Bethany Matsko and Eva Santorini, 18 February 1998.)

Seems like they know just when NOT to call.
(Advertisement for Ameritech Caller ID service, January 1997. Capitalization in original.)

The more deeply we know something in this way, the more deeply we don't know it.
(Stephen Batchelor. 1997. Buddhism without beliefs. Riverhead Books. 97.)

A lesson in how not to win respect and allegiance, it [the beating—BES] only enforced a reluctant obedience, instilled fear, and left me with a lifelong sense of resentment.
(Monty Roberts. 1997. The man who listens to horses. Ballantine. 56. Emphasis in original.)

We'll have to teach them how to write cover letters, and how not to write cover letters. (Rae Moses, 17 December 1996. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

As some of you may not know, classes are now starting September 11.
(Voicemail message of the Actors' Gymnasium, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, September 1995. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

There was no place left where people (meaning Europeans) weren't.
(Charles Little. 1995. The dying of the trees. New York: Viking. 128.)

What we really have to do is educate people about how this virus is transmitted; and maybe just as important, we have to educate people about how it isn't transmitted.
(NPR broadcast on AIDS, May 1993, courtesy of Jim McCloskey.)

If women have such good memories, why in heaven's name can't they use them to remember when not to remember things?
(Cleveland Amory. 1990. The cat and the curmudgeon. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 81. Emphasis in original.)

it did not make my task any easier since, like so many California girls, she had never been taught when not to be funny.
(Cleveland Amory. 1990. The cat and the curmudgeon. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 251.)

The result was not of first-class importance, if only because the method was indirect and needed confirmation by more direct methods, but it was a revelation to me as to how to do scientific research and, more important, how not to do it.
(Francis Crick. 1988. What mad pursuit. New York: Basic. 47. Emphasis in original.)

I explained to him briefly what was going on—and that the cat had now disappeared altogether. Not surprisingly, while Mary sat down, my brother immediately assumed command. He demanded to know where we had not looked. Only where he couldn't possibly go, I explained, trying to hold my ground. ``I don't want theories,'' he barked. ``Where haven't you looked?''
(Cleveland Amory. 1987. The cat that came for Christmas. New York: Penguin. 17. Emphasis in original.)

We found other restaurants throughout the length and breadth of France which made us wish that the editors of the Michelin would perfect their guidebook by adding a list of places Where not to Eat.
(Joseph Wechsberg. 1985. Blue trout and black truffles. The peregrinations of an epicure. Academy Chicago Publishers. 251. Emphasis in original.)

Gypsy, young and inexperienced, had been just one example of how not to rear lion cubs in the Kalahari.
(Mark and Delia Owens. 1984. Cry of the Kalahari. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 232.)

Yet if any intention remained of calming and eventually reconciling the colonies, passage of the Quebec Act on top of the Coercive Acts was a perfect mode of how not to proceed.
(Barbara Tuchman. 1984. The march of folly: From Troy to Vietnam. New York: Knopf. 198.)

Look where you're going, but also look where you're not going. Most important, explore places you would normally not go and look at things in ways you would normally not see them.
(Tom Brown, Jr. with Brandt Morgan. 1983. Tom Brown's field guide to nature observation and tracking. New York: Berkley. 36. Emphasis in original.)

The editor may also want to advise the author about how to make corrections on the manuscript pages, or caution how not to make them
(Chicago Manual of Style. 1982, 14th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 70. Emphasis in original.)

I don't suppose you know what 'au pied de la lettre' means, Tuppy, but that's how I don't think you ought to take all that stuff Angela was saying just now too much.
(P.G. Wodehouse. 1981. Life with Jeeves. New York: Penguin. 480.)

but this makes rather a small heel, so that you may find wear occurring where the nylon isn't.
(Elizabeth Zimmermann. 1971. Knitting without tears. New York: Simon and Schuster. 102. Emphasis in original.)

but the great lesson we learn from life is to know when and when not to be in the centre of things.
(P.G. Wodehouse. 1963. Stiff upper lip, Jeeves. Herbert Jenkins. 49.)

My heart did one of those spectacular leaps Nijinsky used to do in the Russian Ballet, and I was conscious of a fervent wish that I could have been elsewhere.
Elsewhere, however, being just where I wasn't, I had no option but to grapple with this midnight marauder.
(P.G. Wodehouse. 1963. Stiff upper lip, Jeeves. Herbert Jenkins. 61.)

For carried, as it was not carried by Luther, to its logical result, the argument made, not only good works, but sacraments and the Church itself unnecessary.
(R.H. Tawney. 1954. Religion and the rise of capitalism. New York: The New American Library. 87.)

Our idea was not so much to find out when we were running a temperature as to find out when we weren't.
Frank Sullivan. How to shake a thermometer. In Frank Scully, ed., Fun in bed. New York: Simon and Shuster. 21.)

Movement out of negative islands

It's amazing how much people don't understand.
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 18 July 2012. How much was a measure phrase in context, not the direct object of understand.)

They start taking about themselves, about how much they don't drink.
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 14 August 2011.)

Oh my God, look how much I'm not doing this.
(overheard at 21st Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 12 June 2011.)

On the worst of days she'd haul out a tape recorder and show me just how much progress I was failing to make.
(David Sederis. 2000. Me talk pretty one day. Little, Brown and Company. 8.)

You know how much I don't like those caramels.
(overheard at Trader Joe's, 22nd and Market, Philadelphia, PA, 9 August 2009.)

... and a movie called Blue in the face, a paean to Brooklyn starring Harvey Keitel and Roseanne Barr, featured a brief appearance by me talking about how much I don't like bags in trees.
(Ian Frazier. 2001. One plastic bag at a time. Mother Jones. January/February 2001. 71.)

Even more, it meant realizing how much one didn't know—informed ignorance.
(The monks of New Skete. 1999. In the spirit of happiness. Little, Brown, and Company. 115. Emphasis in original.)

It's pathetic how much I don't remember [about the contents].
(Margitt Lehbert. 30 July 1999. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

Be aware of portion sizes. … Calorie-counters must constantly be aware, not only of what they cannot eat, but also of how much they cannot eat.
(Virginia Lord. 1998. Weight loss. Conscious choice, vol. 11, no. 5. 70.)

That's a fact about us and how much we don't know.
(Paul Churchland, 9 May 1997. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

How long haven't you been to the old house on Landover Street?
(Eugene Santorini, 30 June 1996. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

So it's a way of quantifying redundant information: how much should it count, and how much shouldn't it count?
(Michael Broe, 26 October 1995. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

Movement out of negative islands

but we cannot describe afterward what that experience was. We tend to describe what it wasn't.
(Stephen Levine. 1997. A year to live. New York: Bell Tower. 123.)

the polar bear coin, or the tooney, as I desperately hope it won't be called.
(Ian Brown, CBC Sunday morning, WBEZ, 8 October 1995. Emphasis represents intonational prominence.)

Post 1: Incidentally, a friend of mine tried to get into contact with Aiwass a while ago, and while this failed, he did get the impression that Aiwass was not the HGA of Crowley by any means.

Post 2: What did he get the impression that Aiwass was?
(http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:qr4H8cyzOi8J:vocable.livejournal.com/24627.html+%22what+did+he+*+the+*+that%22&hl=en. Emphasis in original. Example courtesy of Lucas Champollion.)

Movement out of adjuncts

and [Moses] saw the promised land across the Jordan, which he was to die without ever being permitted to enter.
Annie Dillard. 1974 (reprinted 2007). Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. HarperPerennial. 207.

... wages that area workers have struggled for many years to obtain.
(Union announcement, May 8, 2012, Powelton Village, Philadelphia, PA)

"This is the game I grew up watching," Wilson added.
(The Onion, June 9-15, 2011, p. 8, "Gruesome home plate collision reawakens nation's love affair with baseball")

When asked for comment, Lipinski pulled out his mini Constitution and before he could finish saying "This is what we were elected to uphold," was loudly told to just give it a rest already.
(The Onion, June 2-8, 2011, p. 2, "Loser congressman carries around pocket-sized version of constitution everywhere")

The militants brandished plastic weapons and wore costumes lawmakers stayed up late last night making themselves.
(http://www.theonion.com/content/video/u_s_government_stages_fake_coup, accessed 5 Aug 2009.)

The magazine I spend most of my days reading.
(advertisement for "The Economist," attributed to Bill Gates.)

I have this humongous watch that I kick myself for wearing.
(overheard in East Dorset, VT, 9 Nov 2006.)

Then bailiffs tooks the arms of Iraq's once all-powerful leader, and the man the United States went to war to drive from power walked steadily from the courtroom with a smirk on his face.
(AP Newswire, Metro Philadelphia, p. 1, 6 Nov 2006.)

Why did this admirable man turn to the very tyranny he sacrificed so much to overthrow?
(Jessica Blatt and Sean Jacobs. 2002. Things fall apart. The Nation, vol. 274, no. 13. 30)

Enron ... ingratiated itself with those very politicians it gloried in mocking in its ads.
(Thomas Frank. 2002. Shocked, shocked! Enronian myths exposed. The Nation, vol. 274, no. 13. 17)

I hope I shall be able to reinforce some of this in the following pages, which I once again thank you for provoking me to write.
(Christoper Hitchens. 2001. Letters to a young contrarian. Basic Books. x.)

Two months into the war against terrorism, the nation is sliding toward the trap that we entered this conflict vowing to avoid. ... Just as President Bush advises Americans to learn to lead their normal lives while being ever watchful for terrorism, the Justice Department can investigate domestic attacks while respecting the basic rights that we are in this war to preserve.
(New York Times Op-ed, 10 November 2001.)

... Bush declared in a victory speech that he was forced to wait 36 days to deliver.
(Kathy Kieler. We can unite. USA Today, 12 December 2000, p. 1A.)

For me, watching today's black political activists is like meeting a very distant cousin to whom I am constantly struggling to see my relation.
(Ta-Neishi Coates. 2000. I am not my father's child. Philadelphia Weekly, vol. 29, no. 36. 21.)

And a desert is one of those entities, like virginity and sans serif typeface, of which the definition must begin with negatives.
(David Quammen. 1985. Natural acts. A sidelong view of science and nature. New York: Laurel. 176.)