@snailplane In the instances I've heard, the terminating but is pronounced quickly and with finality, not as a lingering "but ...". It can sound a little jarring when first encountered - as if there should be something coming after but.

As Mulder and Thompson note in their paper, it's used like a sentence-final though (bottom of page 2 in the linked pdf).

@thoughtforfood The extracts from that Ngram use the three words differently. E.g. "but at all times", "not directed at ... but at all the men ...", etc. None of the examples on the first page that display those three words use the words in a sentence-final 'but at all'.

On our trip it didn't rain but at all.

@snailplane Apologies, a poor assumption on my part. What does it signify?

@snailplane :)

@snailplane Interesting. Would you mind demonstrating using English words? (I don't speak Japanese beyond a few touristy phrases.)

@snailplane If we replace the sentence-final but with a sentence-final though to make it more familiar, wouldn't it be classified as a conjunction in English as well?

@snailplane Do you mean that but is associated more closely with clause 1 in Japanese where it would be more closely associated with clause 2 in English? E.g. "He saw but he didn't understand." - in English: "(He saw) (but he didn't understand).", and in Japanese: "(He saw but) (he didn't understand)."?

@Mitch How did you link back to your own message?

Oh my. Didn't I get you all but talking.

@Færd But of course. :)

"not but at all" gives some good hits

As per Cerb's declaration and my own, I was going to consider this case finalized, but ...

@Lawrence Well, it didn't feel like a though when I heard it! No pause, no context support for it to mean though. Thanks for the input.

And for those demanding proof of an actual utterance of the phrase, it indeed happened, but what does a single, singular instance tell you? Nothing, I'd say. And I didn't intend to ask if it's grammatical, because I think it's not. So no need to bring up evidence.

@Mitch Thanks. As I have repeatedly done before, I agree with that. Ditto. D'accord. But can't I be curious about archaic constructions?

The only thing that got me to ask about it was that it sounded wrong in such an intriguing way! Like a Mad Lib sentence that shivers on the boundary between gibberish and funniness. I wanted to figure it out, to find out what the hidden engaging thing about it was. And, I think, the fact that it engaged y'all in heated discussion attests to its intriguing curiosity.

I have to admit it takes some getting used to :-)

Now, for all those who care to follow, this is not a serious grammar question. Just a game. You may well want to reconsider and pay no heed to the rest.

This is how far I got:

1. I take this but to (roughly) mean otherwise than or except (refer to sense #2 here), and I refuse to consider other meanings for the time being.

2. I assume that "You don't trust me but at all. " is a valid utterance meaning "You don't trust me except [you don't trust me] at all.", meaning "You don't trust me with the exception that there's no exception.", meaning "You REALLY don't trust me AT ALL."

I'm not going to argue for the validity of the above sentence and the interpretation I gave for it; I'm just going to assume that it's valid and that's what it means, although I'm pretty sure it's unidiomatic, to say the least.

3. Now, making it into a question, it becomes "Don't you trust me but at all?", which sounds like a rhetorical question with the intended meaning of "You should trust me a little bit at least." (NOT "You should trust me completely.", mind you).

4. We arrive now to the question that why but at all makes sense in paragraph #2 but it doesn't in paragraph #3.

I reckon, and I'm becoming convinced, that it has something to do with at all being a negative polarity item.

In 2, it finds its negative setting by way of symmetric reflection of what rests on the left hand side of but in what lies on its right hand side. The negation of the statement before but permeates into what comes after it and gives at all the negative setting it needs: "You don't trust me except for the fact that [you don't trust me] at all."

However, in the question form of the sentence, "Don't you trust me but at all?", there's no legitimate material on the left hand side of but to provide the negative setting that is direly needed on its right hand side: "Don't you trust me except for the fact that [? ? ?] at all?".

5. Why? Because that question should be equivalent to something like "Don't you trust me the least bit?" (refer to 3 above). Now try to find something to substitute for the ? ? ? that would give you that kind of meaning. Your mind goes back and forth to do that, but try as it might, it will never find a good substitute.

There. That's the hidden engaging, intriguing, and mind-boggling side of this almost-meaningless sentence.

I would appreciate not being pinged about this anymore, unless you've read the whole thing I posted here this time and you have a comment on how I played the game. You're free to discuss it how you like with each other among yourselves, though. :)

I'm sensing "paralyses by over analysis" ;-)

:) I just wanted to have some fun.

Indeed, your query was entertaining, if nothing but.

Thanks.

Hehe! You're welcome.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer: "Pay attention" vs. "give attention" by sienna on english.stackexchange.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body: ............................................................t by Ren S on english.stackexchange.com

Sure.

A platform would be on outlet upon which creativity occurs, no?

Yes. Like: Synergy of pen and notebook that creates the?/an? outlet of?/for? self-expression.

@Mitch If you make a post that refers to another post and then attempt to edit it, you'll see that the syntax is a colon followed by number followed by the text of the message. The number is a reference.

You can find the reference for any comment by looking at the permalink to the message. To refer to any message, even one in the near future, you just edit in that number at the beginning of a message.

and the advantage is?

See how that message starting with "If you make..." refers to the following one? I just did quick editing of the first one after looking at the # of the second one.

Yes, I do see that.

@thoughtforfood The whole commenting system, using this use/mention property is therefore Turing complete and can be programmed to compute functions (of course with bounded registers because of the time limit on editing).

So you're referring the "future" comment.

It's been used to crack RSA-128, design ISS shielding that is 3D printed, and simulate the Game of Life in Minecraft.

@thoughtforfood You'll see my comments have already addressed this comment a while ago.

@Færd Put your but at the end of that and see how it feels.

This comment is referencing. @thouht

This comment

@Arrowfar haha. but puns.

sassy

@Mitch Feels buthurt.

> 2 x 4 = 8

Is this two multiplied by four or four multiplied by two?

You read this "Two multiplied by four equals eight.", right?

Or "two fours", or "two times four", I think.

Not "two fours", really. But yes, either two times four equals eight (more common) or two multiplied by four equals eight.

Thanks.

@Mitch Clever indeed. Thanks for sharing! Bookmarked for future reference. Now to try it out.

@Lawrence Does this work? It does! And it pings me, too!

Now for something a little more interesting.

@Lawrence How about a self-reference?

@Lawrence Ha! That worked nicely. Referencing a future comment now.

Are computer scientists the only ones that get so excited about being able to talk to themselves?

@Lawrence Probably. The rest of us try to talk to other people.

By the way, @Mitch @Lawrence from your comments, it looks like neither of you has this wonderful tool:

github.com/oliversalzburg/se-chat-reply-highlight

Its author tends to lurk here a lot. In fact, I can see him now.

@OliverSalzburg is that github page the best place to get your chat helper or should I link to the apps.se Q instead?

@terdon nice. only a couple steps removed from the chat.SE Singularity

I've been using that for years now, I hardly remember chat without it. It makes it much, much more painless.

I'm OK with using the mouse. The mobile chat app needs something better to follow links (I can never seem to press the right screen element)

@Mitch Really? I find typing : and hitting up to get to the message I want to reply to very intuitive and easy.

Not to mention the nice highlight effect and showing you what a message is replying to even if it's gone from the screen.

camo.githubusercontent.com/…

aww

I don't think I've ever heard makes. I'd probably say is, myself.

Hmm. Maybe I would use make for addition. It sounds better for addition, for some reason.

Argh. I don't know what I'd say anymore.

@terdon ?? what? how can you do that on a smartphone?

@terdon I'd say it depends on the context. On SE, I would probably link to [apps.se]

@OliverSalzburg But any updates will go to git, right?

@Mitch You need a smartedphone, silly.

@terdon Oh, sure, on a big screen. Sure that's fine but I don't have a problem using a mouse to do all that.

@terdon Yeah, or if it's someone interested in contributing :)

Thanks, by the way @OliverSalzburg. It's probably my single favorite SE extension.

Glad to hear that :)

@terdon I don't verbalize it at all. That's all paper/electronic stuff. I don't even have an intuition behind 'two times four', it's just ... multiplying.

I kinda expected two multiplied by four to be four times two: 2+2+2+2; ie, 4x2, not 2x4. But in actual usage it's 2x4. Interesting.

@snailplane What about Two times/plus four are eight?

Ah, OK. Thanks.

Makes sense.