Курсовая работа: Multiple negation

f. Can linguists study negation? Not and stay sane they can’t. (Lawler)

Type III

(3) That isn’t really legal, I don’t believe.

Type III is different from types I and II in that the second negated phrase contains a propositional attitude verb, and the proposition expressed by the main clause plays the role, semantically, of the object of that verb. Types I and II have no propositional attitude verb in the second phrase; rather, that phrase most resembles an adjunct to the main clause. (Dowty, 2008)

Jespersen (1940:451), referring to the double (or treble) attraction, states that «in Elizabethan English this particular kind of repeated negation is comparatively rare, while the «resumptive accumulation» is frequent».

On the other hand, Iyeiri (2001:128, 138, 142), whose major concern is Middle English, classifies multiple negation into the following three types:

Type I multiple negation with the negative adverb ne (ne…not )

Nare noman ells dead ne sic ne unsele (Poema Morale, 201)

Type II multiple negation with conjunctive ne/nor

Ne ƥu ne cumest noʒt in Scotlonde (The Owl and the Nightingale, 908)

Type III multiple negation with the combination of not, neither, never, no , ets.

Ne neuer shal none be/born fairer than she (Reynard the Fox, 79/8)

As an overall conclusion, Iyeiri (2001:155) remarks that « muchof the declining process of multiple negation, in fact, takes place during the Middle English period».

Seright's(1966) study is much more restricted than Jespersen's. He confines himself to the analysis of standard double negative constructions, such as It is not inconceivable or It is not impossible. These sentences contain a negative verb or clause negation followed by a case of local negation, inconceivable and impossible, which constitute two examples of morphological or affixal negation. In his view, numerous instances of such standard double-negative constructions can be found and, in contrast to the examples typical of non-standard English such as They don't do nothing, they are generally «limited to the speech of the educated» (Seright, 1966:123). Mention is also made of sequences such as Not to mash nor break the grains, which contain a negative correlative conjunctive. Seright(1966) insists that the use of double negatives of this type is quite wide. (Palacios Martinez, 2001:480)

Rissanen (1999:272) observes that multiple negation was common in the sixteenth century. It must be noted here that Rissanen's definition of multiple negation is broad, as is evident from the four examples he gives:

(1) They cowd not fynd no londe at iiij score fadom (Torkington, 62)

(2) that the Capper nor none other persone shalnot take by hym self or any other persone to his use… (Statutes, III 34)

(3) I am not asham'd of my Name–nor my Face neither. (Vanbrugh, II.III)

(4) that no woman has; nor neuer none Shall mistris be of it, (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, III.I)

Baker (1970) analyses what he calls «logical double sentences». From the perspective of the generative theory of that time, he formulates a polarity-reversal rule to explain the grammaticality of sentences such as There isn 't anyone in this camp who wouldn't rather be in Montpelier. The polarity-reversal rule operates on the cycle of the subordinate clause as it changes the derivational feature associated with would rather to [+ negative]. Its operation on the cycle of the main clause changes the polarity of would rather from [+ negative] to [– negative] and the polarity of anyone from [– negative] to [+ negative]. Attention is also paid to what he defines as pseudo-negative sentences, that is, verbal complements found with predicates such as surprised, disappointed, relieved, glad, sorry, lucky, odd or strange, which provide suitable environments for any, ever, and other elements normally required in negative contexts (e.g. We're surprised that anyone bought anything at all; John is sorry that anything happened; It's strange that anyone could solve the mystery in such short order). (Palacios Martinez, 2001:481)

Horn (1991), for his part, discusses the expression of litotes by means of double negative constructions. By litotes is meant the «a two-component structure in which two negations are joined to give a positive evaluation. Thus «not unkindly» actually means «kindly», though the positive effect is weakened and some lack of the speaker's confidence in his statement is implied. The first component of a litotes is always the negative particle «not», while the second, always negative in semantics, varies in form from a negatively affixed word (as above) to a negative phrase.

Litotes is especially expressive when the semantic centre of the whole structure is stylistically or/and emotionally coloured, as in the case of the following occasional creations: «Her face was not unhandsome» (A.H.) or «Her face was not unpretty».

The function of litotes has much in common with that of understatement – both weaken the effect of the utterance. The uniqueness of litotes lies in its specific «double negative» structure and in its weakening only the positive evaluation.

Pragmatically, the use of double negatives as in «It's not impossible» may be justified, according to Horn, by a series of motivations: politeness (the speaker does not want to commit oneself to a particular option), irony (the speaker acts as if hesitant or unsure on purpose), weight or impressiveness of style (the speaker intends to convey formality to the interlocutor), absence of corresponding positive (there is no word to refer to the opposite term), parallelism of structure (a similar construction was used before), quality (the speaker is neither sure nor unsure about what is being said) and minimisation of processing (in contexts of direct rebuttal or contradiction as a reply to a previous assertion).

Finally, Wouden (1997) devotes part three of his book on negative contexts to the study of multiple negation in different languages. For this scholar the addition of a negative to an already negative construction may lead to the following possibilities: (I) the structure containing various negatives may be

equivalent to a single one as in some varieties of sub-standard English, e.g. I didn 't see nobody nowhere; (II) the two negatives may weaken each other as in the case of litotes above, e.g. She's not an unattractive woman; (III) the two negatives cancel each other out as in logic, giving as result no negation, e.g. Neighbours should not be uncooperative; and (IV) the two negatives intensify each other, e.g. He never stops working, not even at Christmas. As can be easily gathered from the previous account, Wouden's analysis of multiple negation is mainly semantic rather than syntactic; the following taxonomy of multiple negation is derived from each of the four possibilities explained above: (I) negative concord, (II) litotes, (III) denial and (IV) emphatic negation. (Palacios Martinez, 2001:481–482)

3. Analysis of Maylory’s Morte Darthur

The term «multiple negation» or «double negation» are often used ambiguously. Thus, for example they may be taken to refer to sentences like Not many of the boys didn’t talk to John , as in McCawley (1973:206). Though this is unmistakably a negative sentence, its effect is quite the opposite, the force for the assertion having been somewhat weakened by the use of two negatives instead of a straightforward affirmative (cf. Jespersen 1940:449). In popular terms, the negative in this sentence «cancel each other out» and are interpreted as a resulting positive, as in logic or mathematics. Seright (1966:124) suggested that the use of this tipe of multiple negation, which included constructions like it is not unlikely that …, is characteristic of educated usage; according to Patridge (1971:88) it is a type of construction peculiar to literary English.

Alternatively, the terms are used to describe negative sentences with more than one negative in which the negatives do not cancel each other out. For this type of negation Joly adopts the term «compound negation», as opposed to «simple negation».