Talk:not guilty

Legally innocent
My old Black's (3rd) doesn't have this meaning for not guilty. Their definition of innocent does not have any connection with a verdict (or a plea), so the usage note would be wrong. The other senses for innocent that they have seem closer to ordinary meanings of the word innocent: Acting in good faith and without knowledge of incriminatory circumstances or of defects or objections. Similar for phrases: - agent, - conveyance, - purchaser, - trespass, - trespasser, - woman. DCDuring TALK 17:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Requests for deletion - kept
Kept. See archived discussion of September 2008. 09:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

nonguilty
Can somebody add a brief note concerning the differences, if any, in relation to nonguilty? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:25, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * "Not guilty" has a specific legal meaning so that phrase is used in courts. Equinox ◑ 19:31, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I meant regarding its second adjectival meaning --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:33, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Logical relation between necessity and possibility
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 176, reads

Equivalence between pairs of clauses expressing modal necessity and possibility: He must be guilty = He can’t be not guilty. [Nec P ] = [not-Poss not-P ] He must be not guilty = He can’t be guilty. [Nec not-P ] = [not-Poss P ] He isn’t necessarily guilty = He may be not guilty. [not-Nec P ] = [Poss not-P ] He isn’t necessarily not guilty v He may be guilty. [not-Nec not-P ] = [Poss P ] In the annotations on the right we use ‘Nec’ for necessity and ‘Poss’ for possibility, independently of how they are expressed: must, need, necessary, necessarily, and so on, all express modal necessity, while can, may, possible, possibly, perhaps all express possibility. ‘P ’ stands for the propositional content that is modalised or negated: in this case, “He is guilty”. ‘Not-P ’ indicates internal negation, while ‘not-Nec’ and ‘not-Poss’ indicate external negation, with the negative having scope over the modal necessity or possibility.

Is it coincidental that He can’t not be guilty isn't used? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:40, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Your question is not clear. The text quoted seems natural. What is the issue? Equinox ◑ 20:05, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * not guilty is an idiomatic adjective, yet it's still defined as an internal negation of the propositional content, not-P, instead of the lexicalized one of the idiom itself: instead of the sequence not be guilty, every example shows "be not guilty", as if using the idiom --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:19, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

legally innocent
what meaning of legally is used in legally innocent? The second one seems a sentential adverb --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2019 (UTC)