Know Knots!

It's always interesting to learn about historical examples of change in language, but to actually *witness* it? Some very exciting stuff. Either that or I haven't been around laymen enough. But in any case...

Around mid-december, 2005, was the first time I heard this curious linguistic phenomenon. "Will you be coming in my car, or no?"
Some very exciting stuff. It struck me as being unusual because the natural sentence would be, "Will you be coming in my car, or not?"

And since then, I've been encountering it more and more often, from my co-workers, from my churchmates, from random snippets of conversation that manage to waft into my ears on the public transit system, ... .

It's so queer, it's almost addictive! ...except that it's wrong. Nevermind this curious shift in conversational grammar, another thing I've learned is that "younger" adults (in their mid-thirties) are also extremely susceptible to these changes in colloquial speech.

And here's why it's wrong:
When one asks a yes/no question with a choice, the pivotal point, the ellipted part, is the verb. And one does not negate a verb with "no"; one negates it with "not".
e.g. "I did not go to the store today" instead of "I did no go ..."
Hence, it is illogical (and ungrammatical) to ask, "will you be coming or no?" because in full, the sentence would be, "will you be coming, or will you not be coming?"

Some have argued (pitifully and rather unsuccessfully) that the "... or no" is legitimate as an alternative ellipsis. They postulate that the "no" is the implied expletive in the expectent statement, "no, I will not be coming". But there are two main problems with this:
1. Lack of parallel structure. In the same way that it's wrong to say, "I hate fishing, going to school, and to take things out of trash cans", it is wrong to ask, "are you leaving or no?"
2. The converse is never expressed. If one is to advocate the legitimacy of this odious bastard "no", then one must also legitimise his sister "yes". And yet, consider the following sentence: "Are you not leaving or yes?"
Strange, isn't it.

But like the malicious tapeworm that's slowly devouring the flesh of your cute little kitten, the "no" bastard is devouring proper English speech. Will we ever find a cure? Unfortunately, there is no cure for idiocy.

...and here I feel the need to make some disclaimers. I am not saying that I equate speech with intelligence, although I do find that to be a very popular attitude within society (the reason why "smart people" always talk "smart", and the same reason why "dumb people" always think "big words" are the answer to remedy their speech). What I am saying is that I find it rather bothersome (and maybe on some level hilarious) that people with the pretense to pretend to be princely would make such howling errors as the one above. Also, I have known some very bright and intelligent people to have exceedingly poor speech. But seriously, what's the point? Yes, perhaps the attitute that one's speech reflects one station in life is outdated and wrong, but if you can't fight that current, why fail to it? Why would anybody want to be wrong? (whether morally, or grammatically)

...in short, use "not"!