Comment on Yes, this is what people did back then
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 days agoyou’ve omitted “just.” If “just” were not in the sentence I would have instinctively filled it in with the missing words you’ve suggested. But I can’t reconcile “just” with any parse.
katkit@lemmy.world 2 days ago
True. English isn’t my native language and I thought about this, but it somehow just makes sense in my head. The way the “just” is used reminds me of the Modalpartikel we have in German. They’re basically filler words that add nuance, emphasis or expectation to a sentence.
Sometimes people ask “Just why?”, and that’s a bit different than only “Why?”, because it adds a sense of confusion or urgency to the question.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
That makes sense, and “just” is a filler word in English. I can see why in another language like German this would work fine. But in English, at least to me, this seems exceptionally clunky. The simplest explanation is simply that “just” isn’t generally used in a context where “what” is been elided, but maybe there’s a deeper reason why it sounds odd to me.