[pxc]

> I don't remember if this pattern like "All that X is not Y" for "Not all X is Y" sounded wrong to me before i had seen predicate calculus/logic and the quantifiers and DeMorgan.

FWIW: By the time I was in high school, I know I understood DeMorgan's laws because I used them in programming. (I don't remember ever struggling with distribution of Boolean operators, or being taught those rules.) But I didn't actually learn the name 'DeMorgan' until college.

But that still kinda leaves the real question open! Was I primed to care about this distinction by my atypical engagement with contexts where it really matters? Or was I drawn to those contexts because distinctions like that one are naturally highly salient for me?

I suspect it's a mix of both, and that they're mutually reinforcing.

Maybe some day a linguist will happen upon this thread and start looking at scopal ambiguity and isomorphism among adults in specific professions, and turn up something interesting. :)

[jjtheblunt]

(same here i'm pretty sure regarding high school and programming but not knowing the name till college, and i can't remember thinking it was wrong because of non commuting negation with quantifiers in that terminology. i bet there are many of us.)