Consider these sentences:
- I like movies that are not long and boring.
- I like dishes that are not sweet and flavorful
- He is not humble and arrogant.
According to chapter-7 of forall x: Calgary An Introduction to Formal Logic, these types of sentences can have two different types of interpretation.
First is something like '... both: not ... and ...'. For instance, sentence (3) has the general interpretation 'He is both: not humble and arrogant'.
Second is something like '... not both: ... and ...' or '... either not ... or not ...' (both are same). Quoting from the textbook:
One common source of structural ambiguity in English arises from its lack of parentheses. For instance, if I say ‘I like movies that are not long and boring’, you will most likely think that what I dislike are movies that are long and boring. A less likely, but possible, interpretation is that I like movies that are both (a) not long and (b) boring. The first reading is more likely because who likes boring movies? But what about ‘I like dishes that are not sweet and flavorful’. Here, the more likely interpretation is that I like savory, flavorful dishes. (Of course, I could have said that better, e.g., ‘I like dishes that are not sweet, yet flavorful’.)
Essentially, the author is saying that the general interpretation of sentence (2) is 'I like movies that are not both: long and boring' or 'I like movies that are either not long or not boring' (both are same), which feels wrong to me. In fact, This Google search shows that 'not long and boring ' is mostly being used for 'neither long nor boring' on the web. So, the general interpretation seems 'I like movies that are neither long nor boring' to me. So, what should be the general interpretation here?
Also, I am not able to find a single example where a sentence like '... not ... and ...' have that second type of interpretation. So, Do you know such an example? Or sentences like these don't have such interpretations and the author made a mistake?