"I COULD care less" or "I COULDN'T care less" Which is it?

No.

To speak with sound logic, JTT,
is to do so in a manner that a computer woud accurately comprehend.
(I am aware that computers do not comprehend anything,
since thay are not alive, but thay act as if thay understand.)

S Pinker wrote:
... the expression [I could care less].
The teenagers are trying to express disdain,
the adults note, in which case they should be saying [I couldn't care less].
If they could care less than they do, that means that they really do care,
the opposite of what they are trying to say.

David wrote: Yes; that is the point.

As someone who actually lived thru it, and who participated in argument with them right then and there on the scene,
I saw that thay did not understand nor did thay care,
what errors flowed from their mouths.
Thay were ruff and gross in their mental processes.

To speak with sound logic, JTT,
is to do so in a manner that a computer woud accurately comprehend.
(I am aware that computers do not comprehend anything,
since thay are not alive, but thay act as if thay understand.)

Language creates its own logic.
A computer could never "understand" "He kicked the bucket".
There's no logic in equating 'kicking a bucket' with someone dying.

S Pinker wrote:
... the expression [I could care less].
The teenagers are trying to express disdain,
the adults note, in which case they should be saying [I couldn't care less].
If they could care less than they do, that means that they really do care,
the opposite of what they are trying to say.

David wrote: Yes; that is the point.

No, the point is absolutely clear that the meaning
of "I could care less" is that the speaker cares little to not at all.

As someone who actually lived thru it,
and who participated in argument with them right then and there on the scene,
I saw that thay did not understand nor did thay care,
what errors flowed from their mouths.
Thay were ruff and gross in their mental processes.

They were 100% correct in their use and you were merely repeating
nonsense that you'd heard from another who was spouting
nonsense. Again, idioms are idioms, everyone knows the
meaning of that phrase.

In the dialects of English that are used on the North American continent,
"I could care less" holds only one meaning and it is hardly the one that you suggest.

That is because of incomplete information,
unless it is known that it derives from an old poem
wherein a character perished from injury to the foot resulting from that kick.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/218800.html

Origin

We all know what a bucket is - and so this phrase appears rather odd. Why should kicking one be associated with dying?

The link between buckets and death was made by at least 1785, when the phrase was defined in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

"To kick the bucket, to die."

One theory as to why, albeit with little evidence to support it, is that the phrase originates from the notion that people hanged themselves by standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck and then kicking the bucket away. There are no citations that relate the phrase to suicide and, in any case, why a bucket? Whenever I've needed something to stand on I can't recall ever opting for a bucket. This theory doesn't stand up any better than the supposed buckets did.

The mist begins to clear with the fact that in 16th century England bucket had an additional meaning (and in some parts it still has), i.e. a beam or yoke used to hang or carry items. The term may have been introduced into English from the French trébuchet - meaning a balance, or buque - meaning a yoke. That meaning of bucket was referred to in Peter Levins' Manipulus vocabulorum. A dictionarie of English and Latine wordes, 1570:

"A Bucket, beame, tollo."

and was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV Part II, 1597:

"Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket." [to gibbet meant to hang]

The wooden frame that was used to hang animals up by their feet for slaughter was called a bucket. Not unnaturally they were likely to struggle or to spasm after death and hence 'kick the bucket'.

Therefore, according to u,
saying: "I couldn't care less " is no different
than saying: "I could care less" and
the presence or absence of the word *not* or n 't has no operative effect.

I don 't see it that way, and
when someone falls into the indicated error,
I lose respect for his ability think clearly or accurately.

It woud be fun to offer YOU a contract, JTT.
Maybe professors of the law of contracts shoud teach
the theory of what u posted.

But while it is understandable that speakers of a language with a literary tradition would tend to be pessimistic about its course, there is no more hard evidence for a general linguistic degeneration than there is reason to believe that Aaron and Rose are inferior to Ruth and Gehrig.

It is absurd even to talk about a language changing for the better or the worse
Most of my fellow linguists, in fact, would say that it is absurd even to talk about a language changing for the better or the worse. When you have the historical picture before you, and can see how Indo-European gradually slipped into Germanic, Germanic into Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon into the English of Chaucer, then Shakespeare, and then Henry James, the process of linguistic change seems as ineluctable and impersonal as continental drift. From this Olympian point of view, not even the Norman invasion had much of an effect on the structure of the language, and all the tirades of all the grammarians since the Renaissance sound like the prattlings of landscape gardeners who hope by frantic efforts to keep Alaska from bumping into Asia.

David writes:

People CAN be and WILL BE held responsibile
for what thay SAY, not for what u suspect
that thay might be THINKING ABOUT, JTT.

Your mind is very badly confused, JTT, to the point of toxicity.
I earnestly hope that u will stay far enuf away from children
as to avoid influencing them until thay are old enuf to defend their minds from your errors.

You are a genuine liberal, JTT: u passionately wish
to deviate from sound reasoning and to generate confusion
and to live in chaos.

Therefore, according to u, saying: "I couldn't care less " is no different
than saying: "I could care less" and the presence or absence of the word *not* or n 't has no operative effect.

Quote:

Therefore, according to u, saying: "I couldn't care less " is no different
than saying: "I could care less" and the presence or absence of the word *not* or n 't has no operative effect.

With this particular idiom, it makes no difference whatsoever,
and you, in fact, know this to be the case.

Even on "logical" grounds, your claim is bogus,
"I could care less" is not the opposite of "I couldn't care less".

A person could care 1%, which, forgetting the actual idiomatic meaning for a moment, would put it, in a strict semantic sense, awfully close to not caring at all.

When we use a modal [historical past tense] form, like could, it often leaves an unspoken conditional hanging "in the air", something that can often be discerned from demeanor/tone of voice.

When someone says, "I could care less", there isn't a native speaker of English on the planet who thinks that they are saying that they actually do care.

These knee-jerk reactions to language, almost always just repeated prescriptions [meaning there's no original thought from today's "language sage"] are actually what demeans and devalues language.

it's i coulnd't care less.
beacuse when your saying i could care less your still caring..
i mean its an obvious question soo..
I couldn't care less is correct!

None of this addresses the language issues, David.
Those issues, you really don`t have the faintest idea how
to address because the complexities of language confound you
and it`s clear that you`re unwilling or incapable of thinking these things through.

You avoid the simple fact that I could care less holds only one meaning in English
and that meaning is pretty much identical to I couldnt care less`.

Knowledgeable folks in language science realize this.

1. What you`ve stated doesn`t amount to a hill of beans.

2. What you`ve stated amounts to a hill of beans.

There`s one more example where the negation makes no difference.

You choose to ignore those things that are beyond your ken. That`s really sad for a mensa.

If I ever say that I coud care less about something,
that will mean that I care about it to a degree above zero,
so that there exists a potential of my reducing the intensity of my interest somewhere between that level and zero, or to absolute zero.

If I ever say that I coud care less about something,
that will mean that I care about it to a degree above zero,
so that there exists a potential of my reducing the intensity of my interest
somewhere between that level and zero, or to absolute zero.

Exactly. So you now admit that it doesn't mean the opposite.

For all practical purposes, "I could care less" could never be taken,
[has never been taken] to mean that the person cares a great deal.

Idiomatically, we all know exactly what is meant

and those who whine about it show that they really have little grasp of how language works.

It would be one thing if you weren't simply repeating someone elses argument,
but just repeating an old canard without thinking really doesn't suit you, David.

David wrote: I grow tired of the redundancy of my repetiton that listeners can know what he has in mind from the crude speaker 's demonstrated anger from facial expression, growling, snarling, brandishing weapons, etc.; i.e., the victim of his dismissive utterance can understand
that he is in the presence of a crude mind that is too stupid to express itself logically and, in its ignorance says THE OPPOSITE of what it means.

Such errors of reasoning evoke little respect.

If u r implying that I have changed my position in any respect: I deny that and the record of this thread will prove me accurate.

I grow tired of the redundancy of my repetiton that listeners
can know what he has in mind from the crude speaker 's demonstrated anger
from facial expression, growling, snarling, brandishing weapons, etc.;

Such errors of reasoning evoke little respect.

Grammar Puss

S Pinker

So these are the "language mavens." Their foibles can be blamed on two blind spots. One is a gross underestimation of the linguistic wherewithal of the common person. I am not saying that everything that comes out of a person's mouth or pen is perfectly rule-governed (remember Dan Quayle).

But the language mavens would have a much better chance of not embarrassing themselves if they saved the verdict of linguistic incompetence as a last resort, rather than jumping to it as a first conclusion.

The other blind spot is their complete ignorance of the modern science of language -- and I don't mean just the often-forbidding technicalities of Chomskyan theory, but basic knowledge of what kinds of constructions and idioms are found in English, and how people use them and pronounce them.

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

U r now on Ignore.
I suggest that u reciprocate in like manner.

50 Years of Stupid Grammar

by Geoffrey K. Pullum


April 16 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a little book that is loved and admired throughout American academe. Celebrations, readings, and toasts are being held, and a commemorative edition has been released.
I won't be celebrating.

The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.
The authors won't be hurt by these critical remarks. They are long dead. William Strunk was a professor of English at Cornell about a hundred years ago, and E.B. White, later the much-admired author of Charlotte's Web, took English with him in 1919, purchasing as a required text the first edition, which Strunk had published privately. After Strunk's death, White published a New Yorker article reminiscing about him and was asked by Macmillan to revise and expand Elements for commercial publication. It took off like a rocket (in 1959) and has sold millions.

This was most unfortunate for the field of English grammar, because both authors were grammatical incompetents. Strunk had very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less. Certainly White was a fine writer, but he was not qualified as a grammarian. Despite the post-1957 explosion of theoretical linguistics, Elements settled in as the primary vehicle through which grammar was taught to college students and presented to the general public, and the subject was stuck in the doldrums for the rest of the 20th century.

[read on]

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm