Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] DimShip redo

[Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thus spake Rob Speer:
> On Sun, Jun 23, 2002 at 05:59:47PM -0400, Glotmorf wrote:
> > It's not a conjunction.  It's an archaic language component.
> 
> Webster disagrees with you on both points. "Lest" is still used in
> modern English - and if it weren't a conjunction, what part of speech
> would it be?
> 
> -- 
> Rob Speer, ye pedantick one

I can't help but put my $0.02 in here:

"Lest" is definately a connective, and I suppose a conjunction in the
grammar-school sense of the word. It's not a conjunction in terms of the
logical work it does, however. When we say "A lest B", we certainly don't mean
"A and B". We might mean "A and not B", but it seems to be more at "A, and if
A then not B". That's logically equivalent to "A and B", though, which
indicates that "lest" cannot be given a purely syntactic characterization.

Hrmph.

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