Jan 16, 2009
Don’t logic chop linguistic heads off: Grammar isn’t deduced from first principles.
If we use arguments like “Two negatives make a positive” to correct someone’s speech, our reasoning is wrong, not the “illogical” speaker’s.
(Arnold Zwicky says a little more.)
* * * * *
Except that if we never don’t do that, we never won’t be wrong.
When the double-negative is intentional, we receive it as a euphemistic and subtle expression. That’s why the unintentional use it bad: it is destructive of nuance.
As are typos, btw. :-)
Frank, I think your point might actually be implied by Mr. Zwicky’s post and AP’s headline–that it’s the expression and nuance that matters, *not* some foolishly consistent first principle. That’d be a point I’d make, anyway.
Pointedly,
KP
His point about “pleased” is a good one — the grammar mavin really sort of fell of her horse by missing that obvious fact.
“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is– ‘Be what you would seem to be’– or if you’d like it put more simply– ‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”‘
-Alice in Wonderland
I don’t disagree with you.
I think the “double negative” Zwicky uses to illustrate is a false double-negative. ‘No’ isn’t a negation in that sentence but a substitute for ‘any.’
That’s what he’s getting at, right?
So it’s not the logic that’s the problem, it’s the bad application of it.
aah! all the examples (of prescriptivism) in that Zwicky post made me hyperventilate a little.
but the moral of the story is, the mind is NOT a computer and human language is not programming language. it’s better than that.
I thought you didn’t make value judgments about languages. Apparently you don’t include programming languages. :)
Illogical? Not hardly!
Dude,
keep it real, that’s what is good about this blog.