LL-L "Syntax" 2002.12.16 (06) [E]

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2002.12.16 (04) [E]

On the subject of double negatives:

So Dale Brown is teaching his freshman English class about double negatives.
In English, says Professor Brown, two consecutive negatives form a positive,
for example when you say "He ain't got no class," you're really saying that
he's a classy guy. And Professor Brown was saying that this situation
prevails in many languages around the world, that two negatives often make a
positive. But then he told his students that the converse was never true. He
was absolutely sure that there was no instance in any language in which a
double positive becomes a negative. And a skeptical freshman in the back row
says, "Yeah, right!"

Ron, I haven't been "on board" for several years, so if y'all already know
this one, please don't post it. I thought it was just too good to miss.

Gabriele Kahn

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From: rossmay <rossmay at bellsouth.net>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2002.12.16 (04) [E]

Mr Hahn spoke of double negatives.  Thereby hangs a tale.

       In both American and British English, the double negative is
considered both ungrammatical, unsymantical, and substandard.
Be that so, and I am a teacher of English and speak, read, and write one
other language, Farci (Persian).

        But that was not always so.  Albert C. Baugh, in his History of the
English Language, says that for a long time in the development of our
language,  the double negative was common, and usage was permitted.  In
fact, he states, it was used to make a stronger nagative.  So Shakespeare
could say, "Thou hast spoken no word all this while - nor understood none
neither; I know not, nor I greatly care not; nor this is not my nose
neither. First he denied you had in him no right; My father hath no child
but I, nor none is like to have; Nor never none shall mistress be of it,
save I alone."
        It is a pity, even though I will stipulate that it is symantically
incorrect as well as grammatical,  that we have lost so useful an intensive
in the name of correctness.  The double negative nowadays is considered
low-class and uneducated, and is surely confined to the slightly educated.
But every now and then, when I am addressing a folk music crowd, I love to
fall into the colorful colloquial dialect of my Scotch-Irish ancestors (or
Scots-Irish as it is said today), and use an expression such as, " I ain't
got no haints in my house!"
        One thing that a student of language and even a professional should
keep in mind is that the prescriptive grammar and syntax of today would not
have flown more that two-hundred years ago.  Language is a self-repairing
animal, and will develop in its own direction, regardless of authorotative
convention, and edicts.
         Surely, the only thing that authority can do to affect a language
is to destroy it as exhibited by what has happened to Frisian and Gaelic and
many other languages over the earth.  By destroy, I mean kill.  Gaelic is
barely alive, has almost no change, as is Frisian.  It can only be preserved
in its present state unless its use is encouraged in Scotland and Ireland,
as well as the Welsh.  I wonder how many Brits still speak their native
tongue other that the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh Celts.
          Another subject I would love to talk about is substandard words,
namely, "ain't".  We know it stood for "something not".  Does anyone know
which two words are contracted.  Is it "aye" and "not", or just what is it ?
I know theories, but does anyone have a written example in some sort of
literature or poetry?   Something with the missing words used separately, or
some such.

                   Harlan Ross May, Gulfport, Mississippi, USA

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