Racial epithet makes news

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:05 PM -0400 7/7/10, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>  No--I just don't see it as a formal double negation, at least, not in
>the same sense. What about "did not fail to notice"? Is that a double
>negative? As far as I know, the customary proscription does not apply to
>"integral" negatives, such as "unhappy" or "fail".
>
>     VS-)

Actually, there are many different proscriptions, some aimed at
negative concord (where the two negatives express a single negation)
and some to logical double negation, where the two negatives "cancel
out", as in this remark by Lindley Murray (1803)

======
Two negatives, in English, destroy one another, or are equivalent to
an affirmative:  as, "Nor  did they not  perceive him"; that is,
"they did perceive him." "His language, though inelegant, is not
ungrammatical",  that is, "it is grammatical".  It is better to
express an affirmation, by a regular affirmative, than by two
separate negatives, as in the former sentence.
======

or most famously in this passage from Orwell's "Politics and the
English Language" (1946), which specifically targets the "not un-"
construction:

=====
Banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of
the not un- formation...It should be possible to laugh the not un
formation out of existence...One can cure oneself of the not un
formation by memorizing this sentence:  A not unblack dog was chasing
a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.
=====

To be sure, other stylists, going back to Erasmus, praise at least
some double negatives as elegant and modest, and Orwell (whose own
prose is rife with the construction he criticizes) is a bit unfair in
choosing his examples in the above passage.

>
>PS: somehow I lost track of the "l". I like "spit infinitive" too, but,
>unfortunately, it was merely a typo.

I realize that, but it was a nice one.

LH

>
>On 7/7/2010 1:44 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 1:29 PM -0400 7/7/10, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>>   I should also note that I /habitually/ use the combination "there is
>>>no reason not to X", although it may be the only double-negative in my
>>>normal repertoire (unless I want to specifically highlight the double
>>>negation--as I have just done with a spit infinitive).
>>>
>>>      VS-)
>>I like the "spit infinitive" (not to be confused with "spit ('n')
>>image"), but are you really claiming you don't have e.g. "not
>>unhappy" in your normal repertoire?
>>
>>LH
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org