tomthorne wrote:tsukinodeynatsu wrote:Charlie Jack wrote:If it's a sin, it seems to be a member of your better class of sins.
The practice of infant baptism was barely commended; and the article on the Lord's Supper expressly affirmed that a faithful believer ought not either believe in or openly confess the real presence and that transubstantiation was an impossibility.
--
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, Volume 1
Since nobody's pointed this out, 'ought not' is short for 'ought not to' and therefore can be followed by 'either'.
Neither comes from not + either and therefore those too words shouldn't be placed together. If there's something breaking it up it's okay.
'should not' can't be followed by 'either' because not+either = neither. There's no invisible 'to' to break it up.
Or at least, this is what the invisible men in my head are telling me. Perhaps someone a bit more learned in linguistics or etymology could chip in.
. . . get onto a corpus and check the numbers.
I couldn't find anything in the British National Corpus, and a search in Google Books gets cluttered by constructions such as "should not either jointly or separately," "should not either directly or indirectly," and the like. But I persist in thinking good users of English use this sort of construction from time to time.
For example:
When going anywhere with her husband, she should put on her ornaments, and without his consent she should not either give or accept invitations, or attend marriages and sacrifices, or sit in the company of female friends, or visit the temples of the Gods.
--Vatsyayana, The
Kama Sutra, translated from Sanskrit by
Sir Richard Francis Burton http://tinyurl.com/Vatsyayana-BurtonHere's part of what Wikipedia has to say about Sir Richard Francis Burton:
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian and African languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_BurtonSuch a transnationalist view should not either trivialise or detract from distinctive Irish dynamics and phenomena; on the contrary it should help us to understand just how significant they were.
--
Edward Madigan and John Horne, "Ireland in the Decade of the Great War, 1912 – 1923: Towards Commemoration," Monaco, 20 – 22 October 2011, Conference Report
http://tinyurl.com/Madigan-HorneEdward Madigan is Resident Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). He is a graduate of University College Dublin and Trinity College, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 2007. His broad research interests include religious faith and identity in modern Britain, the British and Irish experience and memory of the Great War, and British understandings of battlefield courage and cowardice during the first half of the twentieth century.
--From the website of Trinity College Dublin, Centre for War Studies
http://www.tcd.ie/warstudies/members/John Horne is Professor of Modern European History, Trinity College Dublin, and was the first Director of the Centre for War Studies, 2008-2010.He is a member of the Executive Board of the Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Mémorial de Verdun and the Liberty Memorial National World War One Museum in Kansas City. He is the author of several books and over seventy chapters and articles, many relating to the history of war.
--Ibid.
Even now we must recognise that the Government must not either do or seem to do anything which will impair the Press in its free collection of news or in its free expression of views.
--
Parliamentary Debates: House of Commons Official Report (1947)
http://tinyurl.com/Parl-Debates
