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From: colin@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Colin Matheson)
Subject: Multiple negation in English
Message-ID: <DD1tww.B6x@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <adaworksDD049D.JuA@netcom.com> <19950808T175053Z@naggum.no> <KANZE.95Aug9114322@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de>
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 15:05:14 GMT
Lines: 32

In article <KANZE.95Aug9114322@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de> kanze@lts.sel.alcatel.de (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) writes:

>Its just an impression, but I get the feeling that the rule concerning
>double negatives is a purely Germanic phenomena.  In which case,
>(re-)introducing it into English would be a return to the source (and
>a denial of the French influence which allowed it in the first place).

Actually, Old English used the very common system of negating
everything in a sentence that could be negated - here's the first
example I could find in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader (Judith, line 234):

  nanne ne  sparedon      thaes    herefolces
  none  not spared (3PL) the (GEN) army (GEN)
    "they didn't spare any of the army"  

(I think the verb translation is ok - I can't remember the
conjugations very well).  Anyway, in modern English this would be
something like:

  they didn't spare none of the army

The "rule" that two negatives make a positive is a fairly ill-informed
extra-linguistic notion imposed on the language from some kind of
"logical" perspective, I guess - their actual use probably never died
out in everyday speech.

Colin
-- 
Colin Matheson                    | Human Communication Research Centre
Phone: +44 131 650 4632           | University of Edinburgh
Fax:   +44 131 650 4587           | 2 Buccleuch Place
Email: Colin.Matheson@ed.ac.uk    | Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland
