I don't want "negate" to apply to "forms":
Interest in MP doesn’t entail the suggestion that linguists shouldn’t study language-specific grammars or find novel generalizations that might reflect FL’s structure—MP enlarges the questions worth investigating but doesn’t somehow negate the value or relevance of earlier questions or of earlier forms of investigation.
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Hi, Andrew,
@Andrew Van Wagner posted:Interest in MP doesn’t entail the suggestion that linguists shouldn’t study language-specific grammars or find novel generalizations that might reflect FL’s structure—MP enlarges the questions worth investigating but doesn’t somehow negate the value or relevance of earlier questions or of earlier forms of investigation.
As written, I understand that the sentence above says that MP doesn't negate the value or relevance of earlier questions or the value or relevance of earlier forms of investigation.
If you don't want "negate" to apply to "earlier forms of investigation," I just don't understand what you want "earlier forms of investigation" to be associated with.
I don't want it to be read as the following:
doesn’t
(1) somehow negate the value or relevance of earlier questions, or
(2) somehow negate earlier forms of investigation
But instead I want it to be read as the following:
doesn't
(1) somehow negate the value or relevance of earlier questions, or
(2) somehow negate the value or relevance of earlier forms of investigation
In that case, it might be better to keep the second "of." However, the repetition of "earlier" leads to a clear understanding that that pair of phrases is related to the first "of" even if you omit the second one.
Should I cut the extra "of" then? Is it advisable to keep it?
Am I am going overboard in keeping the extra "of"?
