Linguists: double negatives are a common means of emphasizing a negative, but may also cancel each other out to form a positive. However, there are no cases where a double positive is used to create a negative.
Old story about a linguistics professor talking about double negatives and the examples, where it could be used colloquially to convey positive, but there was no counter story: no double positive becoming a negative.
Sidney Morgenbesser gave the rejoinder "yeah, right" (some sources say "yeah, yeah") to JL Austin's talk on double negatives sometimes implying a positive and there being no example of a double positive implying a negative.
It's worth distinguishing between "double negative" & "emphatic negative." Lots of languages have the latter (French "ne…pas", Slavic langs, etc.) and there's no confusion.
In Eng, most "double negatives" are really emphatic, & not as bad as many grammarians claim.
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Me
Case in point: "I ain't got nobody".
..
Also, you smartarse motherfuckers ... > Well played 🍻
My magabonics needs work.
And a voice piped up:
"Yeah, right"
It's worth distinguishing between "double negative" & "emphatic negative." Lots of languages have the latter (French "ne…pas", Slavic langs, etc.) and there's no confusion.
In Eng, most "double negatives" are really emphatic, & not as bad as many grammarians claim.
No!
Perry Mason encouraged a lot of perjury.
April is National Procrastination Awareness Month.
How about triple negatives...
It was way better than their first draft, though, which was:
“Nobody doesn’t not dislike Sara Lee”🎶
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reduplication
😬
Before I learned a little Spanish, I thought that native Spanish speakers were just uneducated. I was quite wrong.
“Don't make no difference what nobody says
Ain't nobody like to be alone”
Rather than "the democrat"...
Red state "logic".
Irregardless??
Noted.
I wont never do it again.
=/= a double negative