Those pesky negatives (revisited)

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 10, 2004, at 9:26 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Those pesky negatives (revisited)
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>> Actually, I forgot to add the appropriate smileys. I'm not taking it
>> as
>> seriously as I may have seemed. I'm retired with nothing to do,
>> basically, after I've finished changing the cats' litterbox and taken
>> out the trash. So, I sometimes put more ardor into my postings than
>> the
>> situation calls for. Like, I don't have underlings to kick around
>> anymore, so I have a lot of psychic energy with no way to expend it.
>>
>> What interests me about "to not verb" is that it seems to have come
>> out
>> of nowhere. Most of the stuff that prescriptivists rail against has
>> been around for generations, if not centuries. But, AFAIK, no
>> prescriptivists of the old school have included "to *not* verb" in the
>> class of "split infinitives" because it simply didn't exist in their
>> day. But why and how did it come into existence? What motivated it? It
>> really "bugs my head," as used to be said.
>>
> I wonder how we can really tell that previous generations didn't
> say/write "to not V"; I'd think that a proscription of split
> infinitives would automatically extend to these (and to "to never V").
>
> As to why these should occur in the first place, part of the
> motivation may be (if I can describe this in arnold's presence
> without making a fool of myself) the tendency to form reduced
> versions of AuxV + to, which would be impossible if "not" or anything
> else intervened.  (If these quasi-modals are relatively new
> formations (as I suspect--arnold, can you fill in here?), this would
> support Wilson's sense that the "(Aux)V not to V" is increasing in
> frequency.)  Since "not to" can't reduce to "notta" in this
> environment (although it can in e.g. "There's notta lotta hope for
> the Sox"), the result is that we end up with a more informal
> utterance in
> "I'll tryDuh not do it anymore"
> as opposed to
> "I'll try not to do it anymore"
>
> Similarly with "Let's tryDuh not get there before 9:00."
>
> In the case of "wanna not" vs. "want not to" there's an orthogonal
> factor, which is the availability of, and (ceteris paribus)
> preference for, the neg-raised paraphrase ("don't wanna").  But cf.
>
> "I want never to see you again"
> "I wanna never see you again"
> "I never wanna see you again"
>
> The first of these strikes me as stilted/awkward or formal register;
> maybe a Henry James or Jane Austen character speaking, but nobody I
> know.  The second is one of our infinitive-splitters, but otherwise
> natural enough.  The last is natural, but may strike some as
> illogical, since the "never" really goes logically with the "seeing"
> and not with the "wanting".  Now consider the sense of "want" =
> 'should' as used in the environment of
>
> "You want not to turn right until the second light after the 7-11."
> "You wanna not turn right until the second light after the 7-11."
> "You don't wanna turn right until the second light after the 7-11."
>
> the first again seems too high-register, the neg-raised version at
> the bottom seems not to (seems to not?) carry the right sense of
> "want", and the middle, infinitive-splitting one again seems fine.
> One more case where neg-raising is ruled out is when the "want" is
> itself negated:
>
> He doesn't want not to eat meat, he just wants to stick to free-range
> chickens.
> He doesn't wanna not eat meat, he just wants to stick to free-range
> chickens.
> ??He doesn't not wanna eat meat, he just wants to stick to free-range
> chickens.
>
> OK, these are a bit weird, but I like the second one best.
>
> Now consider "hafta not":
>
> "If you're gonna cook, you really hafta not leave a big mess for me
> to clean up."
>
> (Yes, my kids are home for the summer.)  Here there's no alternative:
> "have not to" is impossible, and "don't hafta" has a totally
> different meaning.  This is again technically a split infinitive once
> again, standardly represented as "you have to not leave a big mess".
> Similarly for "You gotta not keep stepping on my foot when we dance"
> (vs. *You got not to...).
>
> larry

Yes, I see what you mean. In fact, it seems to me that cases like the
"wanna" sentences could very easily provide a template, as it were, for
"to not VERB." If, e.g "he doesn't wanna not eat meat" is at least
possible in speech - and it seems clearly so to me; in fact, I can
imagine that I myself, perhaps under the influence of a little bud/Bud
might say something similar - then the next step - to *write* "he
doesn't want to not eat meat" follows rather straightforwardly. And, of
course, once it gets into print, it becomes observationally "correct."

You rule, Lar!

-Wilson

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