2022-02-11 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – D - double negative
2022-02-11
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – D - double negative
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียง double = “DUHB-uhl”
ออกเสียง negative = “NEG-uh-tiv”
Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions:
Double negative
The phrase “double negative” is not itself an error of any sort,
but it does name a construction considered illiterate
or narrowly dialectal.
Such a construction employs two negatives
to express a single negation.
Illiterate or careless speech abounds with
such expressions as “can’t hardly,” “haven’t scarcely,” “can’t scarcely.”
Such double negative has been allowable in past centuries,
but they are now out of style and unacceptable.
You are not likely to say “I didn’t get no money”
or “I haven’t seen nobody,”
but you should be careful to avoid using not
with such negative words
as no, but, nor, only, hardly, barely, scarcely and except:
“I did not have but five hours sleep.”
“You can’t help but love that child.”
Common Errors in English Usage Dictionary:
Double negative
It is not true, as some assert,
that double negatives are always wrong;
but the pattern in formal speech and writing
is that two negatives equala mild positive:
“he is a not untalented guitarist” means he has some talent.
In informal speech, however,
double negatives are intended asnegatives:
“he ain’t got no talent” means he is a lousy musician.
People are rarely confused about the meaning of either pattern,
but you do need to take your audience into account
when deciding which pattern to follow.
One of the funniest uses of the literary double negative
is Douglas Adams’ description of a machine dispensing
“a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
The A-Z of Correct English Common Errors in English Dictionary:
Double negatives
The effect of two negatives is to cancel each other out.
This is sometimes done deliberately and can be effective:
I am not ungenerous. (= I am very generous.)
He is not unintelligent. (= He is quite intelligent.)
Frequently, however, it is not intentional
and the writer ends up saying the opposite of what is meant:
I haven’t had no tea. (= I have had tea.)
You don’t know nothing. (= You know something.)
Be particularly careful with ‘barely’, ‘scarcely’, ‘hardly’.
These have a negative force.
I wasn’t SCARCELY awake when you rang. (= I was very awake.)
Be careful too with constructions like this:
I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t come.
Say either: I wouldn’t be surprised if he came.
or: I would be surprised if he didn’t come.
Sometimes writers put so many negatives in a sentence
that the meaning becomes too complicated to unravel:
Mr. Brown denied vehemently that it was unlikely
that no one would come to the concert.
Does Mr. Brown think that the concert will be popular or not?
Rewrite as either:
Mr. Brown was certain the concert would be well attended.
Or: Mr. Brown feared that no one would come to the concert.
Dictionary.com:
USAGE NOTE FOR DOUBLE NEGATIVE
Double or multiple negation was standard in English
through the time of Shakespeare.
An oft-quoted line from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c1390)
exemplifies the practice in earlier English:
“He never yet no vileynye ne sayde”
( He never said anything discourteous ).
Similar uses of double or multiple negation
to reinforce or strengthen a negative are
universally considered nonstandard in modern English:
They never paid me no money.
He didn't have nothing to do with it.
They do not occur in educated speech or writing, where any and anything would be substituted
for no and nothing insuch examples.
Other uses of double negatives are fully standard.
Occasionally a double negative strongly suggests
an affirmative alternative:
We cannot just say nothing about the problem
( We must say something about the problem ).
The use of a negative before an adjective or adverb
having a negative sense or with a negative prefix is also standard
and is the figure of speech known as litotes,
in which something is affirmed by denying its opposite:
In the not unlikely event that the bill passes, prices will certainly rise.
St. Paul said that he was “a citizen of no mean city”
(Tarsus in Cilicia; Acts 21:39),
meaning that the city was important.
See also hardly.
Dictionary.com:
USAGE FOR DOUBLE NEGATIVE
There are two contexts where double negatives are used.
An adjective with negative force is often used with a negative
in order to express a nuance of meaning
somewhere between the positive and the negative:
he was a not infrequent visitor;
it is a not uncommon sight .
Two negatives are also found together
where they reinforce each other rather than conflict:
he never went back, not even to collect his belongings .
These two uses of what is technically a double negative are acceptable.
A third case, illustrated by
I shouldn't wonder if it didn't rain today,
has the force of a weak positive statement
(I expect it to rain today) and is common in informal English
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Usage Notes
The Double Negative: It's Not Unusual (Sometimes)
It's not the worst rule to break
We all know how bad double negatives are.
Along with ending a sentence in a preposition,
the double negative might be near the top of the list of English grammatical crimes.
And yet we find them all the time, often in colloquial speech,
sometimes in written prose.
We find them a lot in song lyrics,
where an extra no might be dropped in
to fill an empty syllable or add emphasis,
such as "I can't get no satisfaction" or "ain't no sunshine when she's gone."
The type of construction most frequently criticized
by grammarians is when
two negatives are used to convey what is intended as a single negation.
It's only from the context of the song that we know that
"I can't get no satisfaction" means "I cannot be satisfied."
A satisfied Mick Jagger makes for a boring song.
The argument against double negatives is founded
on the basis that negation is an absolute concept;
something is either present or absent,
and adding a second negative to a sentence
does not make it more negative than it was before.
Nevertheless, the use of double negatives in a cumulative fashion,
imposed for a kind of emphasis, exists as far back as Chaucer in the Middle Ages. Shakespeare used it as well:
And that no woman has; nor never none shall be mistress of it.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 1602
One way to interpret a sentence
containing a double negative is to read it mathematically.
In math, if you multiply two negative integers (e.g., -5 x -7),
the resulting product is a positive integer (+35).
Similarly,
if you combine two negative expressions in the same sentence,
one might be tempted to read the sentence as a positive expression.
Literally speaking,
"I can't get no satisfaction" means
"I can indeed acquire some satisfaction,
I'm just fine in my pursuit of such, thanks for asking."
I haven't got no reason to lie to you.
after cancelling out the two negatives: I have got a reason to lie to you.
But once in a while
we encounter a double-negative expression that is purposefully craftedbecause it expresses something slightly different from
what the sentence would mean without the negatives.
Consider the following:
Division of Wildlife Resources officials say
it's not uncommon to see a moose in the area,
but to be attacked by one is rare.
— Idaho State Journal, 27 Oct. 2017
But, as the Economist editorial also noted,
it’s not unheard of for U.S. Presidents to talk in glowing terms
about their Chinese counterparts.
— John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 26 Oct. 2017
Let Me Be Frank with You isn't perfect,
but it's not unworthy of its three remarkable predecessors,
which together form one of the toughest acts to follow in contemporary American literature.
— Michael Schaub, NPR.org, 6 Nov. 2014
Such constructions occur with regularity in English,
and they are accepted despite containing two negative components,
the word not and the prefix un- before an adjective.
In classical rhetoric,
such constructions are known as examples of litotes,
defined as
"understatement in which
an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary."
These constructions are generally considered to be artful wordings
that express something subtly different from what would be expressed
if the two negatives were cancelled out.
So while it might not be uncommon to see a moose in the area,
that doesn't mean it occurs every day, either.
The phrase is deliberately chosen
because its intent is to dispel a notion of uncommonness
with regard to moose.
Similarly,
the book is "not unworthy" of its predecessors,
rather than simply "worthy,"
because the idea of its unworthiness was already being suggested
by the fact of its not being perfect.
It's probably not a coincidence
that one of the most familiar instances of such an expression
is also the title of a song.
When Tom Jones sings "It's Not Unusual" to be loved by anyone,
it's a different meaning than would be construed
by "It's Usual."
Plus—if we all agreed that being loved was an everyday thing,
would we sing this much about it?
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:
usage: The double negative was standard in English
through the time of Shakespeare.
In Modern English it is universally considered nonstandard:
They never paid me no money.
He didn't have nothing to do with it.
In educated speech or writing,
any and anything would be substituted for no and nothing.
Certain uses of double negation, to express an affirmative,
are fully standard:
We cannot sit here and do nothing (meaning “we must do something”).
In the not unlikely event that the bill passes, prices will rise
(meaning the event is likely). See also hardly.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Words of the Week - of July 20th, 2018
Not that we would ever seek to muddy the waters,
but the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage
points out that there are multiple ways
the double negative can function in English;
it can, for instance, act as an emphatic negative,
and as an unemphatic positive.
The emphatic negative
(Shakespeare's "And that no woman has; nor never none Shall mistress be of it" from Twelfth Night) is quite old, dating back in use before Chaucer (who also used it).
This construction serves to reinforce the negative idea in a sentence.
The unemphatic positive construction serves as an understated way
of saying that something is indeed so,
as when Jane Austen wrote in Mansfield Park
"...I have (I flatter myself) made no inconsiderable progress in her affections."
We'll leave it to you to decide which the President was employing.
Our attention was also drawn recently to an article
published on the World Wide Web, which mentioned us.
It began quite swimmingly.
I sincerely enjoy a good dictionary.
Who doesn't love an article by someone who enjoys a good dictionary?
Nobody, that's who.
And we were very much enjoying this one,
until we reached the second paragraph, which began thusly.
Recently, I was disappointed by Merriam- Webster online.
Quelle Horreur!
What might we have done, and how may we make it better?
I looked up “immolation,”
mostly because it’s the kind of word whose correct spelling
I prefer to confirm before using it in a post.
Here’s what M-W had to say:
1 : the act of immolating : the state of being immolated
2 : something that is immolated
Oh, that. Why do we use this seemingly circular definition for immolation?
Well, once upon a time,
when someone wanted to enjoy a good dictionary
one was forced to haul out a rather large
(it was, in fairness, trying to encapsulate an entire language)
object composed of paper and ink.
In order to save space,
certain words were defined using information that could quickly
and readily be found by the reader.
So, if one were to look up the noun immolation,
and saw that a verb form of immolate was used in the definition,
all one would have to do is look at the next entry or so on that page.
In the digital age we have tweaked this practice slightly.
Thanks to the glory of the Internet,
we are able to use hyperlinks rather than
have the reader look for the necessary word with the search box.
(If you would like a more serious and detailed explanation of this practice
it can be found here).
For this week's antedating
we are taking a fresh look at the date of exceptionalism.
This word, which we define as
"the condition of being different from the norm;
also :
a theory expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region,"
may be used to describe any region or country,
although it is very frequently paired with American.
The earliest known use of exceptionalism had previously been 1929,
but recent findings show that the word was in use more than 80 years prior.
To this we are approaching,
and we even hope that the tedious stupid West India debates
of the last fortnight may be accepted as the sweeping away
of the last heap of the rubbish of exceptionalisms.
— The Standard (London, Eng.), 4 Jul. 1848
And for those who are worried that
Americans might not have been the first people
to be associated with exceptionalism, fret not,
for by the 1860s the British were already applying it to our country
(albeit in a fairly sneering fashion).
Collins COBUILD English Usage:
Usage:
There are two contexts where double negatives are used.
An adjective with negative force is often used with a negative
in order to express a nuance of meaning
somewhere between the positive and the negative:
he was a not infrequent visitor; it is a not uncommon sight.
Two negatives are also found together where they reinforce each other
rather than conflict:
he never went back, not even to collect his belongings.
These two uses of what is technically a double negative are acceptable.
A third case, illustrated by
I shouldn't wonder if it didn't rain today,
has the force of a weak positive statement (I expect it to rain today)
and is common in informal English
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:
Usage Note:
It is a truism of traditional grammar
that double negatives combine to form an affirmative.
Readers coming across a sentence like
He cannot do nothing
will therefore interpret it as an affirmative statement
meaning "He must do something"
unless they are prompted to view it as dialect or nonstandard speech.
Readers will also assign an affirmative meaning to constructions
that yoke not with an adjective or adverb
that begins with a negative prefix such as in- or un-
as in a not infrequent visitor or a not unjust decision.
In these expressions the double negative conveys a weaker affirmative
than would be conveyed by the positive adjective or adverb by itself.
Thus a not infrequent visitor seems likely to visit less frequently
than a frequent visitor.
· "You ain't heard nothin' yet," said Al Jolson in 1927 in The Jazz Singer,
the first talking motion picture.
He meant, of course, "You haven't heard anything yet."
Some sixty years later President Reagan taunted his political opponents
by saying "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
These famous examples of double negatives that reinforce
(rather than nullify) a negative meaning show clearly that
this construction is alive and well in spoken English.
In fact, multiple negatives have been used to convey negative meaning
in English since Old English times,
and for most of this period, the double negative was wholly acceptable.
Thus Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales could say of the Friar,
"Ther nas no man nowher so vertuous,"
meaning "There was no man anywhere so virtuous,"
and Shakespeare could allow Viola in Twelfth Night to say of her heart,
"Nor never none / Shall mistress of it be, save I alone,"
by which she meant that
no one except herself would ever be mistress of her heart.
But in spite of this noble history, grammarians since the Renaissance
have objected to this form of negative reinforcement
employing the double negative.
In their eagerness to make English conform to formal logic,
they conceived and promulgated the notion that
two negatives destroy each other and make a positive.
This view was taken up by English teachers and has since
become enshrined as a convention of Standard English.
Nonetheless, the reinforcing double negative remains
an effective construction in writing dialogue or striking a folksy note.
· The ban on using double negatives to convey emphasis does not apply
when the second negative appears in a separate phrase or clause,
as in I will not surrender, not today, not ever
or He does not seek money, no more than he seeks fame.
Note that commas must be used to separate the negative phrases
in these examples.
Thus the sentence
He does not seek money no more than he seeks fame is unacceptable,
whereas the equivalent sentence with any is perfectly acceptable
and requires no comma:
He does not seek money any more than he seeks fame.
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