Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: Cherries are blue?  (was: Nit-picking)
Message-ID: <D6AuK1.D5s@indirect.com>
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Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 10:02:25 GMT
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Not so very long ago, Paul Sampson <paul.sampson@octacon.co.uk> said...
>I don't know what's going on here, or why it's so hard for people to grasp the
>concept of a question being used to express surprise as a means of challenging
>a 'throwaway' assumption.
>
>Somebody makes a statement like, e.g, "But bananas are yellow, not blue like
>cherries". 
  ...
>Suppose I choose to express disbelief in the, admittedly tangential, bit about
>the cherries by uttering the phrase "cherries are blue?".

  All kidding aside, this is perfectly reasonable.  You're taking a 
declarative statement, and turning it into a yes-or-no question asking 
whether that statement is true or false.
  Besides making fun of this reasonable usage, I was pointing out the 
actually ridiculous habit of putting a question mark at the end of a 
declarative sentence, but =not= intending to make a question out of it.
  So then...

  I wonder why people put question marks at the ends of declarative 
sentences?

  How would you answer this apparent yes-or-no question?

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
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        Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
