Hardly ... not

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 06:55:36PM +0000, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
> 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"?

Quite to the contrary, I had to scroll all the way down to
learn what statement your "Yup" was agreeing with.

So I had to read your response first, then the original
statement it answered, and then your response again to
understand it in context.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

> ------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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>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
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