s1. He lives not in a world of merely physical things, but in a world of signs and symbols.
s2. He doesn't live in a world of merely physical things, but in a world of signs and symbols.
I happened to see s1, and I instantly noticed that s1 is in 'not A but B' structure.
However I can't see whether s1 is grammatically correct.
I think s2 looks better.
This is a question of tone. 1 is more rhetorical or oratorical, and 2 is more mundane. In other words, you should prefer 1 if you are writing an essay or making a speech, and 2 if you are just talking about everyday matters.
Notice that they both observe parallelism. With lamentable frequency people trying to sound pompous and authoritarian use the inverted syntax of the first one, but omit the second 'in' (which is WRONGohMYhowWRONGcanYOUbe
)
b
Last edited by 5jj; 05-May-2013 at 15:32.
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