Hardly ... not

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Yup. Multiple negation of emphasis, not the prescriptivist's multneg. (And aren't you glad you don't have to scroll all the way down just to read "Yup"?
------Original Message------
From: Arnold Zwicky
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: [ADS-L]             Re:       Re: [ADS-L] The N-word at the tim             e of Huck Finn
Sent: Mar 12, 2009 1:24 PM

On Mar 12, 2009, at 8:25 AM, Ron Butters wrote:

> The prevailing LIBERAL attitude was patronizing
> at best, and there was hardly a white person alive before 1950 who
> did not hold
> views of African-Americans that would not be viewed as racist today.
>

not a contribution to the substantive content in this thread, but a
note on the form of the "there was hardly ..." clause, which i take to
be overnegated.  i would axe the second negation, to give:
   there was hardly a white person alive before 1950 who did not hold
views of African-Americans that would be viewed as racist today.

arnold

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