Racial epithet makes news

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:58 PM -0400 7/7/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 7/7/2010 03:12 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>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.
>
>More than unfair.  Grammatical and ungrammatical, for example, are
>exclusive (generally if not always).  But what is the color of
>unblack or ungreen?  And (un)small can be grande or venti.
>
Indeed.  Actually, "ungreen" is attested, but precisely when "green"
is an evaluative adjective with a simple opposite, so ungreen
politicians, power stations, solutions, etc.  But even then, I'm not
sure how often we'd get "not ungreen", and even "not ungrammatical"
might be limited in application.  The most frequent "not un-" forms
are those where "unX" is a contrary of "X" and where there is an
evaluative dimension:  "not uncommon", "not unhappy", or "not
unsatisfying" (or, for that matter, "not without ____"); it's
precisely these usages that dot Orwell's own prose (unbeknownst to
him, perhaps).

LH

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