:: Re: [DNG] Historical note on double…
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Autor: aitor
Fecha:  
A: dng
Asunto: Re: [DNG] Historical note on double negation.
Hi Hendrik,

On 24/12/20 15:49, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> Agreed. Happy to see neither..nor used. Sometimes that's the clearest way to
> say something.
>
> But I'd have said "neither the mouse nor the keyboard responded".
>
> This seems to be the prevailing English convention about double negation
> nowadays -- that a double negation is a positive.
>
> Historical note:
>
> But there's an older convention (which I've heard dates back to Old English
> and is common in other modern languages) where a double negation is used for
> emphasis.
>
> As in,
>
>     I ain't seen nothing!

>
> This convention, which is perfectly understandable, was stamped out of
> educated usage bu grammarians who slammed their understanding of Latin grammar
> onto English which until than had a quite different grammer.
>
> Another such an example is
>     John and me went swimming.
> Here 'and' serves as a preposition.  Again, not Latin grammar.
> And this has led fo confusion, when students misunderstand the new
> Latin-inspired rules and start to treat 'and' as a preposition taking -- of
> all things -- the nominative and end up with
>     He gave the ball to John and I.

>
> Long live the complexities of evolving languages!


Thanks for your clarification :)

Aitor.