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That's "Hemingway" ;)

I think the original sentence was already pretty weird, since I wouldn't say "My shelf contains no books." making it hard for me to judge what is not weird.

However, "Does your shelf contain a book by Hemingway?" sounds equally correct to "No, my shelf contains no book by Hemingway."

And equally correct to "My shelf contains no books."




Upon review, I realized the parallel construction in "No, my shelf contains no book by Hemingway, but it does contain one by Hemmingway" would help smooth things out.

More to the point, https://archive.org/details/stephencranebiog00stal/page/40/m... has this real-world example: "Although Crane’s list of books at Brede Place contains no book by James Fenimore Cooper, he obviously knew his Cooper."




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