[87306] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Double negatives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Doty)
Mon Nov 30 15:49:23 2009
In-Reply-To: <1cb7130b0911301243w3e66e7f4tf0fe7886d04b1b19@mail.gmail.com>
From: Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:47:34 -0800
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Certainly in some places, but any can also have a non-negative
meaning: "Any kind of pie is fine."
(Also, how did we get on pie? I want some now...)
Chris
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:43, Tracy Canfield <toastrix@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/11/30 ghunchu'wI' 'utlh <qunchuy@alcaco.net>:
>> Did I err in using the name "Standard English" to refer to the strict
>> grammatical rules taught in school? Or did my English teachers err in
>> telling me that double negatives essentially cancel?
>
> Your English teachers erred, and they erred in two different ways.
>
> One is the "double negatives cancel", which others have gotten into,
> so I won't rehash.
>
> The other is the idea that the negative only occurs once in an English
> sentence. Something more subtle seems to be going on here. Compare
>
> SE: I don't want any pie.
> Other Englishes: I don't want no pie.
>
> An English teacher might say that the first sentence contains one
> negative element, and the second contains two. But consider this
> disallowed SE sentence:
>
> SE: *I want any pie.
> SE: I want some pie.
>
> (the * is a standard linguistic shorthand for a sentence that native
> speakers would consider impermissible)
>
> The rule doesn't seem to be "Some varieties use double negatives, and
> some don't." The rule is more along the lines of "SE uses 'some' with
> non-negative constructions of this sort, and 'any' with negative
> constructions; some other spoken varieties use 'some' with
> non-negative constructions and 'no' with negative constructions." I
> don't have _The Language Instinct_ nearby, but Pinker argues (citing
> someone else, I think) that when you compare the distribution of "any"
> and "no" in these sorts of construction, they have the same rules. In
> other words, if "no" is a negative above, "any" is too.
