"yeah, yeah" again (another versions)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Jul 22 21:38:16 UTC 2012 

On Jul 22, 2012, at 4:35 PM, Baker, John wrote:

> The anecdote strikes me as inherently implausible.  Given the different nature of affirmations and negations, why would a linguist even think it worth asserting that two positives never make a negative?  And, if he or she did think this a point worth making, isn't it likely that the linguist would have given it a moment's thought and realized that the validity of the point is far from clear?  We don't have to go as far as "yeah, yeah" or "sure, right" to see that; even "yes, yes" can be dismissive at best.
> 
> 
> John Baker

Actually, even though I've continued (for apparently more years in the archive than I'd recalled) to express skepticism about the anecdote--whether it's attributed to Morgenbesser or Kripke, and directed at Austin, Chomsky, or some unidentified soon-to-be-mortified linguist--based on the fact that the stories keep changing and on the lack of any direct witness (typical of urban legends, of course), I don't agree that the initial point isn't worth making.  For one thing, it turns out to be relatively hard--take it from someone who's been working on negation for over 40 years--to pin down an intrinsic difference between the content of negative and affirmative propositions.  People have been trying since Kant and Frege, and indeed since Aristotle and Aquinas, but beyond the fact that negative expressions can be defined as the marked member of the opposition (when there is a marked member), what makes negative expressions negative?  Here's a relevant discussion from my book on the topic (_A Natural History of Negation_, U. of Chicago Press, 1989), back when I was willing to take the Morgenbesser attribution (sounds like a Robert Ludlum installment: _The Morgenbesser Attribution_) at face value.  This is footnote 19 to Chapter 5, on pp. 554-55 (attached to a passage in the text addressing the question of when an affirmative can or can't naturally be expressed by a double negation):
================
Whereas two affirmatives never reduce to a single negative--to which one is tempted to respond, in the immortal riposte of Sidney Morganbesser [sic], "Yeah, yeah".  Seriously, though, this difference in the cancellation properties of negation and affirmation has often been taken as a diagnostic for notional negativity in predicates and propositions:  one who is bad at being bad ends up being good, but one who is good at being good is not bad.  Cf. Givón 1970 and Cruse 1980, 1986 for additional examples and discussion. 
=============

And in defense of the plausibility of the original claim, even if no linguist made it at a talk whether in the presence of Morgenbesser or not, it was noted upthread that the number of "yeah" (1, 2, 3, or more) that can be used to sarcastically express negation is basically relevant; but the number of negations that can affirm in the classic cases of cancellation is in principle two (or theoretically some higher even number).  Of course, a "No" can sarcastically express 'yes' just as a "Yeah" can express 'no'--with or without Yiddish inflection.

LH 



 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Laurence Horn
> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 12:33 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "yeah, yeah" again (another versions)
> 
> Thanks, Garson.  Well, despite the compelling nature of that "is said to have piped up" in the 1977 NYT Mag piece and the claim that someone heard that Morgenbesser confirmed the anecdote (multiple levels of indirection indeed), I still don't see anything more definitive than the Scotch verdict "not proven".  Not much point in going around in circles any more times, I suppose.
> 
> LH
> 
> On Jul 20, 2012, at 11:57 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> 
>> The ADSL archive has a discussion back in 2004.
>> Title: anyone for an anecdote fact-check? (yeah, yeah)
>> 
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;19avrQ;200412271402090500D
>> 
>> One old message states that a Morgenbesser confirmed the anecdote.
>> (The evidence is given via multiple levels of indirection.)
>> 
>> [Begin old message from archive; tafkac.org seems to be dead]
>> 
>> From: Laurence Horn
>> Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 20:14:11 -0500
>> 
>> At 2:45 AM -0500 12/27/04, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>> 
>>> On the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup, Mark Webb found a citation of the
>>> Morgenbesser anecdote from 1977 (NYT Magazine):
>>> 
>>> http://tafkac.org/language/yeah_yeah.html
>>> 
>>> Webb later heard that Morgenbesser confirmed the anecdote but was "sick
>>> of hearing about it":
>>> 
>>> [log in to unmask]" target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask]
>>> 
>> Thanks, Ben.  Very interesting.  Clearly different from yesterday's
>> version in at least four ways:
>> 
>> (1)  It's placed in London rather than at Columbia
>> (2)  The stooge's claim applies to all languages rather than just to English.
>> (3)  The stooge is unnamed and suffers career death; clearly we're
>> not talking J. L. Austin here.
>> (4)  Sidney Morgenbesser's name is spelled "Sydney"
>> 
>> So at least one of these versions is very wrong.  Too bad nobody
>> asked Morgenbesser for the details he was sick of hearing about,
>> since they seem to change from telling to telling.
>> 
>> [End old message from ADS archive]
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 11:32 PM, Garson O'Toole
>> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: "yeah, yeah" again (another versions)
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> The Yale Book of Quotations has an earlier cite than Wikipedia. Also,
>>> there does not appear to be an entry in Wikiquote for Morgenbesser.
>>> 
>>> [Begin excerpt]
>>> 
>>> Sidney Morgenbesser
>>> U.S. philosopher, 1921-2004
>>> 
>>> A philosopher of language once presented a formal lecture in which he
>>> announced that a double negative is known to mean a negative in some
>>> languages and a positive in others but that no natural language had
>>> yet been discovered in which a double positive means a negative.
>>> Whereupon professor Sidney Morgenbesser is said to have piped up from
>>> the back of the room with an instant, sarcastic, "Yeah, yeah."
>>> 
>>> Reported in N.Y. Times Magazine, 14 Aug. 1977
>>> 
>>> [End excerpt]
>>> 
>>> Garson
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>> Subject:      "yeah, yeah" again (another versions)
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> 
>>>> [from alt.usage.english]
>>>> 
>>>> Some time back I heard the following joke:
>>>> --
>>>> A college linguistics professor was discussing double-negatives with his =
>>>> class. He said, "In English, a double-negative creates a positive. In =
>>>> some languages, such as Russian, a double-negative is still a negative. =
>>>> However, in no language does a double-positive make a negative.
>>>> 
>>>> A student in the back row called out, "Yeah, right."
>>>> 
>>>> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>>>> 
>>>> One problem with the claim that Morgenbesser's "Yeah, yeah" or "Yeah, =
>>>> right" came during a lecture sometime in the 1950s at Columbia by J. L. =
>>>> Austin is that even though the riposte sounds like Morgenbesser, the =
>>>> original claim doesn't sound like anything Austin would say.  And then =
>>>> again it would be nice to know whether Austin ever gave a lecture at =
>>>> Columbia sometime in the 1950s.  We know what he said at Harvard; those =
>>>> lectures turned into _How To Do Things With Words_, his William James =
>>>> lectures compiled by his students and published in 1962.  We know he =
>>>> lectured at Berkeley during the same period.  But is there evidence he =
>>>> gave a lecture at Columbia in the 1950s, other than his supposedly =
>>>> playing straight man to Morgenbesser?  (Now, of course, the exchange =
>>>> would be up on YouTube the next day and Austin couldn't deny it.)
>>>> 
>>>> Some sites on the internet claim that this is in fact a "true urban =
>>>> legend" (i.e. an urban legend that turns out to be true), but the =
>>>> references are all to things like "All of this is somewhat corroborated =
>>>> at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser, with (as far as I =
>>>> can tell) "somewhat" being the operative term.  Do we have a FOAF =
>>>> (friend of a friend) who claims to have witnessed the exchange in =
>>>> person?
>>>> 
>>>> It looks like snopes.com used to have an entry on this, but it's been =
>>>> scrubbed away.  Puzzling.
>>>> 
>>>> LH=
>>>> 
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