yeah, no

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Jul 20 19:19:19 UTC 2012 

On Jul 20, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Charles C Doyle wrote:

> Fred cites the NY Times Magazine for 14 Aug. 1977--"reported in."  I'm not sure what would qualify as a certain attestation for the first occurrence of an oral quip like that!
>
> Charlie

I'm not convinced. (Especially by a NY Times Magazine attribution, since another Times Magazine article attributes the same story to Kripke.)  I note that (even) the wiki entry for Morgenbesser treats this anecdote among their "stories and quotations".  It's suspicious that the attestations different lectures to different audiences in different years--or in a range of years, as in the case of the supposed lecture by J. L. Austin at Columbia "in the 1950s" cited in one of the obituaries for Morgenbesser on his death in 2004 [see fn. 1 in Wiki-entry--as well as the fact that they often involve different speakers. I've also asked a number of philosophers of language who knew Morgenbesser, and at most they say it's the kind of thing he would have said (as his N. Y. Times obit has it, "The episode was classic Morgenbesser: the levity, the lightning quickness, the impatience with formality in both thought and manners, the gift for the knockout punch"), but nobody seems actually to!
  attest to hearing him say it firsthand.  The Independent in that obit puts it this way (*emphasis* added):

==========
Generations of philosophers and linguists have heard the story of the Columbia lecture *in the 1950s* in which the eminent Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin explained how many languages employ the double negative to denote a positive ("he is not unlike his sister"), but that no language employs a double positive to make a negative. Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, waved his arm dismissively, and retorted: "Yeah, yeah."
==========

I can confirm that generations of philosophers and linguists have heard this story, or variations on it, but it would be nice to find one who actually described hearing it first hand.  I know--picky, picky.

LH
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 1:54 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jul 20, 2012, at 1:35 PM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>
>> Who was the philosopher who, responding to a lecturer who declared that two negatives can signify a positive but two positives can never import a negative, muttered, "Yeah, yeah"?
>>
>> (I just checked my YBQ; it was Sidney Morgenbesser.)
>>
>> --Charlie
>
> Actually, as far as I know, this has not actually been attested.  I once attributed the anecdote to Morgenbesser, and others "corrected" me, citing Saul Kripke or someone else (and the remark as either "yeah, yeah" or "yeah, right"), but when I tried tracking it down I found it all cites to be apocryphal or at best uncertain.  Does Fred have an actual cite for Morgenbesser?  (It's been claimed, e.g. in a NYT Magazine article some time ago, that Morgenbesser was especially adept at precisely this kind of comeback but that doesn't prove he actually came up with it on a particular occasion.)
>
> LH
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
>> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 1:12 PM
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Jul 20, 2012, at 12:58 PM, Sam Raker wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think the "yeah" is 'empty,' although whether its content is 'semantic' is really a question of, well, semantics. My gut instincts tell me the "yeah" contributes something along the lines of, "I can see how you might think that, but..." or a sarcastic "I can see how YOU might think that, but..."
>>>
>>> -Sam
>>
>> i.e. "Yeah, right.  No,…"?
>>
>> LH
>>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>>> From: Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>>>> Date: July 20, 2012 12:21:01 PM EDT
>>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>> Subject: Re: yeah, no
>>>> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>>>> Subject:      Re: yeah, no
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> And, of course, there's the immortal "Yes, we have no bananas . . . ."
>>>>
>>>> --Charlie
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
>>>> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 12:12 PM
>>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>>
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> At 7/20/2012 12:02 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>> Ben's links show just how complex "Yeah, no" really is.  There's more than
>>>>> one kind.
>>>>
>>>> And he's not even including the Japanese response to a question posed
>>>> in the negative.  Which I as a non-native don't understand too.
>>>>
>>>> Joel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> JL
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>>> -----------------------
>>>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>>>> Subject:      Re: yeah, no
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jul 20, 2012, at 9:28 AM, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Isn't introductory "Yeah" sometimes semantically empty--just a filler
>>>>>> like "Hmm"?  Or perhaps signifying merely '+ politness'?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --Charlie
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Maybe sometimes, but not obviously in Jon's example (which isn't unique),
>>>>>> where a simple "No, you're right" would strike me as a bit odd.  I confess
>>>>>> that as a non-native "Yeah, no" speaker, I'm not sure I have a handle on
>>>>>> what it's doing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> LH
>>>>>>> ________________________________________
>>>>>>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>>>>>> Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
>>>>>>> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 9:05 AM
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There it seems to mean, "Yes indeed, and no, I wouldn't think of
>>>>>>> contradicting you."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> JL
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 8:53 AM, Jonathan Lighter <
>>>>>> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Former NYPD detective on CNN today: "Yeah, no, you're right!"
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> JL
>>>>>>>
>>
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