Double negative


A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation. Languages where multiple negatives affirm each other are said to have negative concord or emphatic negation. Lithuanian, Portuguese, Persian, French, Russian,
Polish,
Bulgarian,
Greek, Spanish, Icelandic, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, and Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of modern English. Chinese, Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, negative concord occurs in a minority of languages.
Languages without negative concord typically have negative polarity items that are used in place of additional negatives when another negating word already occurs. Examples are "ever", "anything" and "anyone" in the sentence "I haven't ever owed anything to anyone". Negative polarity can be triggered not only by direct negatives such as "not" or "never", but also by words such as "doubt" or "hardly".
Because standard English does not have negative concord but many varieties and registers of English do, and because most English speakers can speak or comprehend across varieties and registers, double negatives as collocations are functionally auto-antonymic in English; for example, a collocation such as "ain't nothin" or "not nothing" can mean either "something" or "nothing", and its disambiguation is resolved via the contexts of register, variety, location, and content of ideas.
Stylistically, in English, double negatives can sometimes be used for affirmation, an understatement of the positive. The rhetorical term for this is litotes.

English

Two negatives resolving to a positive

When two negatives are used in one independent clause, in standard English the negatives are understood to cancel one another and produce a weakened affirmative : this is known as litotes. However, depending on how such a sentence is constructed, in some dialects if a verb or adverb is in between two negatives then the latter negative is assumed to be intensifying the former thus adding weight or feeling to the negative clause of the sentence. For this reason, it is difficult to portray double negatives in writing as the level of intonation to add weight in one's speech is lost. A double negative intensifier does not necessarily require the prescribed steps, and can easily be ascertained by the mood or intonation of the speaker. Compare
  • There isn't no other way.
versus
  • There isn't no other way!
These two sentences would be different in how they are communicated by speech. Any assumption would be correct, and the first sentence can be just as right or wrong in intensifying a negative as it is in cancelling it out; thereby rendering the sentence's meaning ambiguous. Since there is no adverb or verb to support the latter negative, the usage here is ambiguous and lies totally on the context behind the sentence. In light of punctuation, the second sentence can be viewed as the intensifier; and the former being a statement thus an admonishment.
In Standard English, two negatives are understood to resolve to a positive. This rule was observed as early as 1762, when Bishop Robert Lowth wrote A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes. For instance, "I don't disagree" could mean "I certainly agree", "I agree", "I sort of agree", "I don't understand your point of view ", "I have no opinion", and so on; it is a form of "weasel words". Further statements are necessary to resolve which particular meaning was intended.
This is opposed to the single negative "I don't agree", which typically means "I disagree". However, the statement "I don't completely disagree" is a similar double negative to "I don't disagree" but needs little or no clarification.
With the meaning "I completely agree", Lowth would have been referring to litotes wherein two negatives simply cancel each other out. However, the usage of intensifying negatives and examples are presented in his work, which could also imply he wanted either usage of double negatives abolished. Because of this ambiguity, double negatives are frequently employed when making back-handed compliments. The phrase "Mr. Jones wasn't incompetent." will seldom mean "Mr. Jones was very competent" since the speaker would've found a more flattering way to say so. Instead, some kind of problem is implied, though Mr. Jones possesses basic competence at his tasks.

Two or more negatives resolving to a negative

Discussing English grammar, the term "double negative" is often, though not universally, applied to the non-standard use of a second negative as an intensifier to a negation.
Double negatives are usually associated with regional and ethnical dialects such as Southern American English, African American Vernacular English, and various British regional dialects. Indeed, they were used in Middle English: for example, Chaucer made extensive use of double, triple, and even quadruple negatives in his Canterbury Tales. About the Friar, he writes "Ther nas no man no wher so vertuous". About the Knight, "He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde / In all his lyf unto no maner wight".
Following the battle of Marston Moor, Oliver Cromwell quoted his nephew's dying words in a letter to the boy's father Valentine Walton: "A little after, he said one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him what it was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be no more the executioner of His enemies." Although this particular letter has often been reprinted, it is frequently changed to read "not... to be any more" instead.
Whereas some double negatives may resolve to a positive, in some dialects others resolve to intensify the negative clause within a sentence. For example:
  • I didn't go nowhere today.
  • I'm not hungry no more.
  • You don't know nothing.
  • There was never no more laziness at work than before.
In contrast, some double negatives become positives:
The key to understanding the former examples and knowing whether a double negative is intensive or negative is finding a verb between the two negatives. If a verb is present between the two, the latter negative becomes an intensifier which does not negate the former. In the first example, the verb to go separates the two negatives; therefore the latter negative does not negate the already negated verb. Indeed, the word 'nowhere' is thus being used as an adverb and does not negate the argument of the sentence.
An exception is when the second negative is stressed, as in I'm not doing ; I'm thinking. A sentence can otherwise usually only become positive through consecutive uses of negatives, such as those prescribed in the later examples, where a clause is void of a verb and lacks an adverb to intensify it. Two of them also use emphasis to make the meaning clearer. The last example is a popular example of a double negative that resolves to a positive. This is because the verb 'to doubt' has no intensifier which effectively resolves a sentence to a positive. Had we added an adverb thus:
Then what happens is that the verb to doubt becomes intensified, which indeed deduces that the sentence is indeed false since nothing was resolved to a positive. The same applies to the third example, where the adverb 'more' merges with the prefix no- to become a negative word, which when combined with the sentence's former negative only acts as an intensifier to the verb hungry. Where people think that the sentence I'm not hungry no more resolves to a positive is where the latter negative no becomes an adjective which only describes its suffix counterpart more which effectively becomes a noun, instead of an adverb. This is a valid argument since adjectives do indeed describe the nature of a noun; yet some fail to take into account that the phrase no more is only an adverb and simply serves as an intensifier. Another argument used to support the position double negatives aren't acceptable is a mathematical analogy: negating a negative number results in a positive one; e.g., ; therefore, it is argued, I did not go nowhere resolves to I went somewhere.
Other forms of double negatives, which are popular to this day and do strictly enhance the negative rather than destroying it, are described thus:
Philosophies aside, this form of double negative is still in use whereby the use of 'nor' enhances the negative clause by emphasizing what isn't to be. Opponents of double negatives would have preferred I'm not entirely familiar with Nihilism or Existentialism; however this renders the sentence somewhat empty of the negative clause being advanced in the sentence. This form of double negative along with others described are standard ways of intensifying as well as enhancing a negative. The use of 'nor' to emphasise the negative clause is still popular today, and has been popular in the past through the works of Shakespeare and Milton:
The negatives herein do not cancel each other out but simply emphasize the negative clause.
Up to the 18th century, double negatives were used to emphasize negation. "Prescriptive grammarians" recorded and codified a shift away from the double negative in the 1700s. Double negatives continue to be spoken by those of Vernacular English, such as those of Appalachian English and African American Vernacular English. To such speakers, they view double negatives as emphasizing the negative rather than cancelling out the negatives. Researchers have studied African American Vernacular English and trace its origins back to colonial English. This shows that double negatives were present in colonial English, and thus presumably English as a whole, and were acceptable at that time. English after the 18th century was changed to become more "logical" and double negatives became seen as canceling each other as in mathematics. The use of double negatives became associated with being uneducated and illogical.
In his Essay towards a practical English Grammar of 1711, James Greenwood first recorded the rule: "Two Negatives, or two Adverbs of Denying do in English affirm". Robert Lowth stated in his grammar textbook A Short Introduction to English Grammar that "two negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative". Grammarians have assumed that Latin was the model for Lowth and other early grammarians in prescribing against negative concord, as Latin does not feature it. Data indicates, however, that negative concord had already fallen into disuse in Standard English by the time of Lowth's grammar, and no evidence exists that the loss was driven by prescriptivism, which was well established by the time it appeared.