JACQUES ROUBAUD(which had not been the case)
she had added ‘‘it is even very nice out’’
would this have meant that she thought
that by simply saying
‘‘it is nice out’’ she had not been precise enough,
that she had not su≈ciently asserted
how nice the weather was?
Probably.
But could she have said
‘‘it is very nice out, it is even very nice out’’?
No.
Why?
It is simply not said. If she had said
‘‘it is even very nice out’’ after having said
‘‘it is very nice out’’
she would have applied the qualifier ‘‘even’’ to the utterance
‘‘it is very nice out.’’ But when one says
‘‘it is very nice out’’ in no case does one say
it is nice out but not very nice,
which added on to the utterance ‘‘it is nice out’’
would be as unlikely as ‘‘it is even very nice out’’
and it follows that this ‘‘even’’ cannot apply
to the utterance
‘‘it is nice out.’’
—Really?And was it nice out?
—It was.
—richard sieburth and françoise gramet