"never" usage

Question

In the sentence "Long-lived quiescent cells NEVER YET activated by antigen interaction", without the word "never", I will interpret it as "although quiescent, the cells can be activated". What's the usage of "never" here?

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Ieyasu (Email Removed) burbled
[nq:1]In the sentence "Long-lived quiescent cells NEVER YET activated by antigen interaction", without the word "never", I will interpret it as "although quiescent, the cells can be activated". What's the usage of "never" here?[/nq]
It is a negative that can be replaced with "not" for negativity but cannot be replaced with "not" to indicate that these particular cells are still virginal. If the cells are long-lived, then there is a possibility that they may be stimulated by antigens on more than one occasion. Before the second occasion, they are no longer in the activated state induced by the previous antigen contact and not yet activated by the subsequent interaction. They are still the same cells; no apoptosis for some or most of them during or after the first activation.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]In the sentence "Long-lived quiescent cells NEVER YET activated by antigen interaction", without the word "never", I will interpret it as "although quiescent, the cells can be activated". What's the usage of "never" here?[/nq]
Never adds meaning. Without it the sentence is meaningless.

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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It is not English to me. Cyber seems to understand it though, so it is probably established jargon for that field.

I would say "not yet activated" or "never activated" for the long-lived case. However, "never yet" seems to become more acceptable by the minute. If one wants to use "never", then it does prevent the false path that "never activated" might signify a failure to activate.
Still, I don't see how "not yet activated" gets re-initialized if the process is repeated for long-lived cells.
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.

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[nq:1]>[/nq]
The usage of "never" is its usual meaning. It's the usage of "yet" that qualifies "never". "Never" alone, without "yet", could be taken to imply that these cells will never be activated by antigen at any time; adding "yet" qualifies "never activated" to mean "not activated up until the present, although such activation may occur later".
[nq:1]<< (CyberCypher) It is a negative that can be replaced with "not" for negativity but cannot be replaced with "not" ... wants to use "never", then it does prevent the false path that "never activated" might signify a failure to activate.[/nq]
Yes. I take it to mean "not activated as of yet" or "not activated up to the present".
[nq:1]Still, I don't see how "not yet activated" gets re-initialized if the process is repeated for long-lived cells.[/nq]Hmm, I think that may be CC's assumption that "long lived quiescent cells" must necessarily have been activated by antigen at some point in order to become "long lived quiescent cells". These LLQCs would be the classic "memory cells" of the immune system, responsible for the long-term immunity conferred by previous exposure to a given antigen, the very thing which makes vaccination a useful strategy. Such memory cells would be ready to respond immediately upon re-exposure to their antigen, without going through the process of careful cross-checking to determine whether other immune cells are also responding to the same antigen which occurs upon initial exposure to a given antigen.

(The specificity of any given immune cell for an antigen is a random thing thus immune cells responsive to an antigen that is a constituent of one's own body can be and are generated all the time and it wouldn't do to have the immune system activated against one's own body every time an individual immune cell has been generated against a self-antigen. There is a process for weeding out such self-reactive immune cells before they even allowed to react to antigen at all, but this is not 100% effective.)

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"Carmen L. Abruzzi" (Email Removed) burbled

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/nq]

No, I assume that they are virgin cells "never yet" activated by antigens to produce antibodies. Should they be, they will return to the quiescent state after the antigens disappear. I don't have enough knowledge about the biology of immunity to know about the memory cells of the immune system.

"

These LLQCs would be the classic "memory cells" of the immune system, responsible for the long-term immunity conferred by previous ... such self-reactive immune cells before they even allowed to react to antigen at all, but this is not 100% effective.)[/nq]
Which is why some people suffer from auto-immune diseases like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]In the sentence "Long-lived quiescent cells NEVER YET activated by antigen interaction", without the word "never", I will interpret it as "although quiescent, the cells can be activated".[/nq]
You can't interpret it that way because there's no "can be" or "capable of being" in the sentence fragment. Activated means they are (or in this case, never were) activated, not that they can be activated.
The other problem is that when "yet" means "nevertheless", I think it needs to have the same kind of phrase before it as after it. In this case, they would be adjective phrases. So there could be a phrase "long-lived cells that are quiescent yet capable of being activated." Or more highfalutin: "long-lived cells, quiescent yet capable of being activated". (Some might insist on a comma after "quiescent" in each case.) But you can't have "...quiescent cells, yet capable of being activated..."
(Those examples could be shorter if immunologists have a word, maybe "activatable", that means "capable of being activated.)
[nq:1]What's the usage of "never" here?[/nq]
As people have said, it's a negative. It also shows that "yet" must refer to time, so this "yet" means "until now" or "until the time being talked about".

Jerry Friedman

"never" usage

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