Thank you, Untaught, for your very insightful comment.
Not being a teacher, I cannot answer your question.
All that I can do, however, is tell you that the following conversation is probably grammatically correct.
Tom: See that beautiful girl over there? Why not go speak to her?
Shy James: I don’t think that she speaks any English.
Tom: Well, talk to her. Who knows? She might speak some English.
I am 99.99% sure that people would NOT say, “I don’t think that she speaks some English.”
Hopefully, one of the language experts will soon answer you!
If I think that a thread starter appreciates my help, I am very happy to try hard to find a good answer for him/her.
I found the answer in a book that is used by teachers throughout the world.
It seems that we are dealing here with something called transferred negation.
a. When you find time, you may wish to google this subject. I think that it will greatly expand your knowledge of English.
The following ideas are from that book. These are NOT my comments.
a. “I think (that) it isn’t a good idea.”
b. “I don’t think (that) it is a good idea.”
This source says that (b) is weaker.
[MY comment only: So I think that many people prefer to say “I don’t think that he is a nice person” instead of the (“stronger”) “I think that he is not a nice person.”]
That book has a sentence somewhat similar to yours:
a. One group of verbs that allows transferred negative has these verbs:
anticipate, be supposed to, believe, expect,. imagine, suppose, think, etc.
b. Here are the book’s two examples:
i. She imagined (that) we wouldn’t say anything.
ii [transferred negation]: She didn’t imagine (that) we would say anything[b].
James
Reference: A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Randolph Quirk and three colleagues. I have the 1985 edition. This information is on page 1,033. [/b]
According to my language experience there is a difference between on time and in time. When sb is on time…then we are speaking about the precise time of the meeting (for e.x)
When sb is in time…then he might have arrived at the meeting with a slight difference of plus or minus 2 or 3 minutes from the precise time.
Correct me if I am wrong!
Almost right… if they are on time the they are there ahead of or right at the start of the meeting. This could be by more than 2 or 3 minutes, however, they would not be later than the start time, not even by two or three minutes.