I know you used “isn’t” on purpose, I was suggesting the person who wrote the original quote made the mistake.
**Exapno **said:
But from what I understand, your online buddy said “Activity X** isn’t** difficult?” but meant “Do you really believe that activity X** is** difficult?”
Note the “isn’t” in the first question and “is” in the second. That’s weird to me, so I thought it might have been a mistake.
Normal to me:
“Activity X is difficult?” → “Do you really believe that activity X is difficult?”
“Activity X isn’t difficult?” → “Do you really believe that activity X isn’t difficult?”
The seemingly weird / backwards situation described in your OP:
“Activity X isn’t difficult?” → “Do you really believe that activity X is difficult?”
I suspect we’re seeing American vs. Commonwealth English at work here.
Looking over the comments so far it seems the Commonwealth folks think “… isn’t difficult?” seems ordinary & correct. The USAians seem to think “… is difficult?” looks / sounds right.
But both are examples of restating the original assertion and expressing dubiousness (dubiosity?) via a “?” standing for rising spoken inflection.
Sorry, that wasn’t targeted at you, but at the posters upthread who had questioned whether I meant “isn’t” or not.
Well, that’s just one example that he offered of words omitted through an ellipsis. As mentioned, “Activity X isn’t difficult, right?” is an ellipsis that doesn’t force the change from “isn’t” to “is”.
If someone wants to express dubiousness at the idea that Activity X is difficult, then he can say "Activity X is difficult? That is a rhetorical question. He isn’t looking for an answer. He is astounded that someone could say such a thing.
Think so?
You think it’s not a grammatical question – that it’s a statement. But that’s only because some words are “understood.” We take shortcuts in English, but that doesn’t mean that the sentences aren’t grammatical or sensible.
The examples that were originally given are rhetorical questions. No answer is expected.
A respondent can express dubiousness by repeating the statement of the original speaker: “Activity X isn’t difficult.” He could put it in the form of a question with the same words if he wanted to. Here, it’s the facial expression and body language that should reflect the disbelief that anyone would dare suggest anything so stupid.
In fact, you can express dubiousness without saying a word.
Sorry, I have no idea what you mean by the bolded part. I’m not trying to be rude, I am genuinely curious about this.
To me, the curious thing is the use of “isn’t”. I thought Really Not All That Bright, Wallenstein, Richard Pearse and maybe some others had the right idea. I don’t see how it can be a simple case of ellipsis. What words were omitted?
I’d like to see examples of the OP’s construction. Not that I doubt they exist–I’m certain they do, though I can’t find any at the moment–I just think it will help clarify what he’s talking about.
What I think he’s talking about is this. Suppose we were talking about speech rather than writing. I can hear in my head this conversation:
“Chess is hard.”
“Um, hello? No it’s not?”
Of course no question was asked but I just used the question mark to indicate tone.
I believe that’s an example of the same question mark usage as that referred to in the OP.
That’s not equivalent. It’s a shortening of “Do you really think so?”
He is not repeating the original statement, that’s the thing. The original statement is that “Activity X is difficult.” He is making the opposite statement that should normally have stood alone, “activity X isn’t difficult.” But then he’s added a question mark that really doesn’t belong there. The question mark implies a questioning tone but it isn’t really related to the words themselves.