meaning
What is the difference in the meaning between "All people are created equal" and "All people are created equally" ?
Does "All people are created equal" mean " God created all people unequally. But all people thinks they are all equal" ?
Does "All people are created equally" mean "God created all people equally. But all people thinks they are all unequal" ?
This is tricky. Conjunctions and prepositions are among the most difficult meanings for semanticists to describe objectively, and this is why they often have the longest entries in dictionaries.
Note that in the previous sentence, between would not have worked in place of among.
Between implicitly suggests a cline or planes of possibilities - it can be an n-dimensional plane, and whatever it is you're talking about lies somewhere in relation to other, points on it.
The very first sense of 'between' on Collins echoes this sentiment:
- at a point or in a region intermediate to two other points in space, times, degrees, etc
This is likely why you have intuited that between seems to suggest a star topology in network parlance.
Among(st), on the other hand, is subtly different - it merely suggests a relationship to other things, without making claims to where it stands. If you consider a scatter plot, you could say that any of the points lies amongst others.
There is the possible exception of outliers and those points which lie on the edge of the groups, but that becomes a much more difficult issue to manage, akin to Sorites Paradox. My response to that is that the following sentence seems perfectly grammatical and sensible:
He was the smartest by far among those students in his age group.
The definition for among(st) on Collins suggests a couple of relationships:
- in the midst of
- in the group (of)
Of course, definitions can quickly become circular - that is, how does "in the midst of" differ from "between"? In the midst of seems to invoke a sense of positioning, rather than just that of relationships in general. The positioning can be based on anything, really, but among seems more felicitous when used in the description of vague constellations of meaning and relations, and between in those that are a bit more explicit.
"In the group of", on the other hand, is a much cleaner relationship.
Overall, the difference between between and among seems to be a fuzzy one - in the preceding clause, among would not have worked in place of between. I would say that between is better-suited for more explicit relationships, and among(st) for messier, more vague constellations of relations.
In the case of your two examples, I would say that the first means that you're comparing "[to be] not invited" with other forms. That is, "[to be] not invited" vs form-1, "[to be] not invited" vs form-2, etc.
If the question had read "what are the differences in meaning amongst negated forms (for example [to be] not invited)?", between/among(st) would both work well.
"Thanks" is an abbreviation of "thank you", so "Thanks, God" would be saying thank you as if speaking to God itself. "Thank God" is a phrase spoken to someone else, suggesting that they are thankful to God for their good fortune.
Some Examples:
After narrowly avoiding a car while riding his bike, James looked up at the sky and said, "Thank you God!"
"Thank god!", responded Jennifer after hearing that James was unharmed.
I'm not certain but it seems like the phrases expand to:
Best Answer
From a technical view, "All people are created equal" means that all people are equal, while "All people are created equally" would imply that they are created in the same way and does not directly state that they are equal. This is, however, the literal meaning of the phrase.
It is often used to mean "We should treat people as equals" or "All people have the same rights" and in this way both can be taken to mean exactly the same thing. As far as I can tell, this stems from the quote "All men are created equal" by Thomas Jefferson during the american revolutionary period. This line is in the declaration of independance, and has come under scrutiny for its use of the word "men":