just can't just

posted on Mar 29, 2007 at 7:17 PM

i've been pondering this one for a while.  for the past few years, on tv and in film, i've been noticing a lot of lines like "we just can't leave her here" or "you just can't pretend it didn't happen".  this sounds utterly wrong to me--  i'd expect it to be "can't just" instead.  a cursory tally of google search hits seems to justify my preference, but in hollywood, convention appears to go the other way.

i think this is more than just a regional speech pattern, though..  there's a pretty clear difference in meaning between the two.  but what's weird is, while i can't discern anything semantically nonsensical about "we just can't leave her here", to my ears it sounds almost as silly as, say, "i can't just get enough".

if anyone has any insight to offer, i'm dying to hear it.


comments


simply cannot simply

posted by fiskmeshi on Apr 3, 2007 at 11:28 AM.
To me, "can't just" and "just can't" have different meanings: "we can't just leave her here" means "we need to do *more* than leave her here", while "we just can't leave her here" means "we can't leave her here, and that's that". While those two are close enough in meaning and context that they're pretty much interchangeable, the "I just can't get enough" means "I can't get enough and that's that", but "I can't just get enough" means "I have to do *more* than get enough" which, yeah, is silly.

PS, your commenting system seems to like putting \ before 's in the subject line, at least in post previews.
(link here)

'

posted by fiskmeshi on Apr 3, 2007 at 11:30 AM.
Apparently it also likes to delete them from final post text. The inserted symbol was a backslash.
(link here)

no subject

posted by dw on Apr 4, 2007 at 11:22 PM.
right, i get the difference in meaning..  but i think in many cases they've got the wrong usage for the meaning they're going for.  an even worse example i heard just a few days ago was, "we just can't think about ourselves".  it's clear from the context she meant "we can't think only of ourselves", instead of "we emphatically cannot think about ourselves", but that's what she said.  it's weird.

and thanks for letting me know about the comment bugs, i'm still figuring out all this php magicquotes nonsense!
(link here)

no subject

posted by fiskmeshi on Apr 9, 2007 at 8:41 PM.
well, THAT i can't really explain. I guess because the contexts so frequently overlap, people forget that they don't mean the same thing and start interchanging them, or something. i can definitely see that being annoying.

and hey, glad to help with the bug.
(link here)

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