WickedLester wrote:You are correct that both interpretations of MrFoolish's comment are valid. So then I wondered why I hadn't noticed the dichotomy myself when I first read it.
It's the question mark, making the sentence a question: "why can't you post your blog entries here?",
Without it, the sentence becomes a command: "don't post your blog entries here".
As this is a common form of sentence construction I wondered why it's not been a problem before. A moment's thought made me realise that we're missing the cadence of the sentence when it is spoken - which reveals the speaker's intent.
Watis
Thanks for a thought provoking post Watis.
It seems to me that with a full stop the sentence becomes a command to stop posting, and with a question mark either interpretation may be correct.
As regards the cadence in the spoken conversation, that would depend on the intonation in the voice and bodily and facial cues and possibly a myriad of other things, pheromones etc.
Yes, except that, for me, the question mark removed the possibility of the sentence being interpreted as a command to stop posting. However, on revisiting the sentence, I can now see how that interpretation can still be made.
Watis