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A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence ("You're not unattractive" vs "You're attractive"). Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation. Languages where multiple negatives affirm each other are said to have negative concord or emphatic negation.
Lithuanian, Portuguese, Persian language, French language, Russian language, Polish language, Bulgarian, Greek language, Spanish language, Icelandic, Old English, Italian language, Afrikaans, and Hebrew language are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of English language. Examples of Double Negatives: From Sentences to Lyrics Grammarly blog (June, 2021), "Double Negatives: 3 Rules You Must Know" Chinese language, Latin, German language (with some exceptions in various High German dialects), Dutch language, Japanese, Swedish language and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, negative concord occurs in a minority of languages.Languages without negative concord typically have negative polarity items that are used in place of additional negatives when another negating word already occurs. Examples are "ever", "anything" and "anyone" in the sentence "I haven't ever owed anything to anyone" (cf. "I haven't never owed nothing to no one" in negative-concord dialects of English, and "Nunca devi nada a ninguém" in Portuguese, lit. "Never have I owed nothing to no one", "Non ho mai dovuto nulla a nessuno" in Italian, or "Nigdy nikomu niczego nie zawdzięczałem" in Polish). Negative polarity can be triggered not only by direct negatives such as "not" or "never", but also by words such as "doubt" or "hardly" ("I doubt he has ever owed anything to anyone" or "He has hardly ever owed anything to anyone").
Because standard English does not have negative concord but many varieties and registers of English do, and because most English speakers can speak or comprehend across varieties and registers, double negatives as are functionally auto-antonym in English; for example, a collocation such as "ain't nothin" or "not nothing" can mean either "something" or "nothing", and its disambiguation is resolved via the contexts of register, variety, location, and content of ideas.
Stylistically, in English, double negatives can sometimes be used for affirmation (e.g. "I'm not feeling unwell"), an understatement of the positive ("I'm feeling well"). The rhetorical term for this is litotes.
In Standard English, two negatives are understood to resolve to a positive. This rule was observed as early as 1762, when Bishop Robert Lowth wrote A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes.
This is opposed to the single negative "I don't agree", which typically means "I disagree". However, the statement "I don't completely disagree" is a similar double negative to "I don't disagree" but needs little or no clarification.
With the meaning "I completely agree", Lowth would have been referring to litotes wherein two negatives simply cancel each other out. However, the usage of intensifying negatives and examples are presented in his work, which could also imply he wanted either usage of double negatives abolished. Because of this ambiguity, double negatives are frequently employed when making back-handed compliments. The phrase "Mr. Jones wasn't incompetent." will seldom mean "Mr. Jones was very competent" since the speaker would've found a more flattering way to say so. Instead, some kind of problem is implied, though Mr. Jones possesses basic competence at his tasks.
Double negatives are usually associated with regional and ethnical dialects such as Southern American English, African American Vernacular English, and various British regional dialects. Indeed, they were used in Middle English: for example, Chaucer made extensive use of double, triple, and even quadruple negatives in his Canterbury Tales. About the Friar, he writes "Ther nas no man no wher so vertuous" ("There never was no man nowhere so virtuous"). About the Knight, "He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde / In all his lyf unto no maner wight" ("He never yet no vileness didn't say / In all his life to no manner of man").
Following the battle of Marston Moor, Oliver Cromwell quoted his nephew's dying words in a letter to the boy's father Valentine Walton: "A little after, he said one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him what it was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be no more the executioner of His enemies."
Although this particular letter has often been reprinted, it is frequently changed to read "not ... to be any more" instead.Whereas some double negatives may resolve to a positive, in some dialects others resolve to intensify the negative clause within a sentence. For example:
In contrast, some double negatives become positives:
The key to understanding the former examples and knowing whether a double negative is intensive or negative is finding a verb between the two negatives. If a verb is present between the two, the latter negative becomes an intensifier which does not negate the former. In the first example, the verb to go separates the two negatives; therefore the latter negative does not negate the already negated verb. Indeed, the word 'nowhere' is thus being used as an adverb and does not negate the argument of the sentence.
An exception is when the second negative is stressed, as in I'm not doing ; I'm thinking. A sentence can otherwise usually only become positive through consecutive uses of negatives, such as those prescribed in the later examples, where a clause is void of a verb and lacks an adverb to intensify it. Two of them also use emphasis to make the meaning clearer. The last example is a popular example of a double negative that resolves to a positive. This is because the verb 'to doubt' has no intensifier which effectively resolves a sentence to a positive. Had we added an adverb thus:
Then what happens is that the verb to doubt becomes intensified, which indeed deduces that the sentence is indeed false since nothing was resolved to a positive. The same applies to the third example, where the adverb 'more' merges with the prefix no- to become a negative word, which when combined with the sentence's former negative only acts as an intensifier to the verb hungry. Where people think that the sentence I'm not hungry no more resolves to a positive is where the latter negative no becomes an adjective which only describes its suffix counterpart more which effectively becomes a noun, instead of an adverb. This is a valid argument since adjectives do indeed describe the nature of a noun; yet some fail to take into account that the phrase no more is only an adverb and simply serves as an intensifier. Another argument used to support the position double negatives aren't acceptable is a mathematical analogy: negating a negative number results in a positive one; e.g., ; therefore, it is argued, I did not go nowhere resolves to I went somewhere.
Other forms of double negatives, which are popular to this day and do strictly enhance the negative rather than destroying it, are described thus:
Philosophies aside, this form of double negative is still in use whereby the use of 'nor' enhances the negative clause by emphasizing what isn't to be. Opponents of double negatives would have preferred I'm not entirely familiar with Nihilism or Existentialism; however this renders the sentence somewhat empty of the negative clause being advanced in the sentence. This form of double negative along with others described are standard ways of intensifying as well as enhancing a negative. The use of 'nor' to emphasise the negative clause is still popular today, and has been popular in the past through the works of Shakespeare and Milton:
The negatives herein do not cancel each other out but simply emphasize the negative clause.
Up to the 18th century, double negatives were used to emphasize negation. "Prescriptive grammarians" recorded and codified a shift away from the double negative in the 1700s. Double negatives continue to be spoken by those of Vernacular English, such as those of Appalachian English and African American Vernacular English. To such speakers, they view double negatives as emphasizing the negative rather than cancelling out the negatives. Researchers have studied African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and trace its origins back to colonial English. This shows that double negatives were present in colonial English, and thus presumably English as a whole, and were acceptable at that time. English after the 18th century was changed to become more "logical" and double negatives became seen as canceling each other as in mathematics. The use of double negatives became associated with being uneducated and illogical.
In his Essay towards a practical English Grammar of 1711, James Greenwood first recorded the rule: "Two Negatives, or two Adverbs of Denying do in English affirm".
Robert Lowth stated in his grammar textbook A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) that "two negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative". Grammarians have assumed that Latin was the model for Lowth and other early grammarians in prescribing against negative concord, as Latin does not feature it. Data indicates, however, that negative concord had already fallen into disuse in Standard English by the time of Lowth's grammar, and no evidence exists that the loss was driven by prescriptivism, which was well established by the time it appeared.
The Simpsons episode "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (1999) features Bart writing "I won't not use no double negatives" as part of the opening sequence chalkboard gag.
In the Harry Enfield sketch "Mr Cholmondley-Warner's Guide to the Working-Class", a stereotypical Cockney employs a septuple-negative: "Inside toilet? I ain't never not heard of one of them nor I ain't nor nothing."
In music, double negatives can be employed to similar effect (as in Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall", in which schoolchildren chant "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control") or used to establish a frank and informal tone (as in The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"). Other examples include Ain't Nobody (Chaka Khan), Ain't No Sunshine (Bill Withers), and Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Marvin Gaye).
Another point of view is that the construction is not really an example of a "double negative" but simply a grammatical template for negation. The second nie cannot be understood as a noun or adverb (unlike pas in French, for example), and it cannot be substituted by any part of speech other than itself with the sentence remaining grammatical. The grammatical particle has no independent meaning and happens to be spelled and pronounced the same as the embedded nie, meaning "not", by a historical accident.
The second nie is used if and only if the sentence or phrase does not already end with either nie or another negating adverb.
Afrikaans shares with English the property that two negatives make a positive:
Double negation is still found in the Low Franconian dialects of west Flanders (e.g., Ik ne willen da nie doen, "I do not want to do that") and in some villages in the central Netherlands such as Garderen, but it takes a different form than that found in Afrikaans. Belgian Dutch dialects, however, still have some widely-used expressions like nooit niet ("never not") for "never".
Like some dialects of English, Bavarian has both single and double negation, with the latter denoting special emphasis. Beyond that, triple and quadrouple negation is also present. For example, the Bavarian Des hob i no nia ned g'hört ("This have I yet never not heard") can be compared to the Standard German "Das habe ich noch nie gehört". The German emphatic "niemals!" (roughly "never ever") corresponds to Bavarian "(går) nia ned" or even "nie nicht" in the Standard German pronunciation. Hat kaaner kaa Messer net do? ("Has nobody no knife not here?") is an example of a triple negative, Bei mia hot nu niamois koana koan Hunga ned ham miassn a quadrouple negative.
Another exception is Yiddish for which Slavic languages influence causes the double (and sometimes even triple) negative to be quite common.
A few examples would be:
In French, the usual way to express simple negation is to employ two words, e.g. ne verb pas, ne verb plus, or ne verb jamais, as in the sentences Je ne sais pas, Il n'y a plus de batterie, and On ne sait jamais. The second term was originally an emphatic; pas, for example, derives from the Latin passus, meaning "step", so that French Je ne marche pas and Catalan No camino pas originally meant "I will not walk a single step." This initial usage spread so thoroughly that it became a necessary element of any negation in the modern French languageThere are literary cases in which "ne" can be used without "pas"; many of these are traditional phrases stemming from a time before the emphatic became an essential part of negation. to such a degree that ne is generally dropped entirely, as in Je sais pas. In Northern Catalan, no may be omitted in colloquial language, and Occitan language, which uses non only as a short answer to questions. In Venetian, the double negation no ... mìa can likewise lose the first particle and rely only on the second: magno mìa ("I eat not") and vegno mìa ("I come not"). These exemplify Jespersen's cycle.
Jamais, rien, personne and nulle part (never, nothing, no one, nowhere) can be mixed with each other, and/or with ne...plus (not anymore/not again) in French, e.g. to form sentences like Je n'ai rien dit à personne (I didn't say anything to anyone) or even Il ne dit jamais plus rien à personne (He never says anything to anyone anymore).
The Spanish language, Italian language, Portuguese and Romanian languages usually employ doubled negative . Portuguese Não vejo nada, Spanish No veo nada, Romanian Nu văd nimic and Italian Non vedo nienteIn Italian a simple negative phrase, Non vedo alcunché ("I don't see anything"), is also possible. (literally, "I do not see nothing") are used to express "I do not see anything". In Italian, a second following negative particle non turns the phrase into a positive one, but with a slightly different meaning. For instance, while both Voglio mangiare ("I want to eat") and Non voglio non mangiare ("I don't want not to eat") mean "I want to eat", the latter phrase more precisely means "I'd prefer to eat".
Other Romance languages employ double negatives less regularly. In Asturian, an extra negative particle is used with negative adverbs: Yo nunca nun lu viera ("I had not never seen him") means "I have never seen him" and A mi tampoco nun me presta ("I neither do not like it") means "I do not like it either". Catalan language and Galician also used to possess a tendency to double no with other negatives, so Jo tampoc no l'he vista or Eu tampouco non a vira, respectively meant "I have not seen her either". This practice is dying out.
Negative correlatives can also occur with already negative verb forms. In literary Welsh, the mutated verb form is caused by an initial negative particle, ni or nid. The particle is usually omitted in speech but the mutation remains: Ni wyddai neb (word-for-word, "Not not-knew nobody") means "Nobody knew" and Ni chaiff Aled fawr o bres (word-for-word, "Not not-will-get Aled lots of money") means "Aled will not get much money". This is not usually regarded as three negative markers, however, because the negative mutation is really just an effect of the initial particle on the following word.
Those constructions apply only when the negatives all refer to the same word or expression. Otherwise, the negatives simply work independently of one another: οὐ διὰ τὸ μὴ ἀκοντίζειν οὐκ ἔβαλον αὐτόν means "It was not on account of their not throwing that they did not hit him", and one should not blame them for not trying.
Examples
A combination of χωρίς/δίχως and δε/δεν has an affirmative meaning: "Χωρίς/δίχως αυτό να σημαίνει ότι δε μπορούμε να το βρούμε." translates "Without that meaning that we can't find it." i.e. We can find it.
A combination of δε/δεν and δε/δεν also has an affirmative meaning: "Δε(ν) σημαίνει ότι δε(ν) μπορούμε να το βρούμε." translates "Doesn't mean that we can't find it." i.e. We can find it.
A combination of δε/δεν and κανείς/κανένας/καμία/κανένα has a negative meaning: "Δε(ν) θα πάρεις κανένα βιβλίο." translates "You won't get any book."
Negating the verb without negating the pronoun (or vice versa), while syntactically correct, may result in a very unusual meaning or make no sense at all. Saying "I saw nobody" in Polish language (widziałem nikogo) instead of the more usual "I did not see nobody" (Nikogo nie widziałem) might mean "I saw an instance of nobody" or "I saw Mr Nobody" but it would not have its plain English meaning. Likewise, in Slovenian, saying "I do not know anyone" (ne poznam kogarkoli) in place of "I do not know no one" (ne poznam nikogar) has the connotation "I do not know just anyone: I know someone important or special."
In Czech language, like in many other languages, a standard double negative is used in sentences with a negative pronoun or negative conjunction, where the verb is also negated (nikdo nepřišel "nobody came", literally "nobody didn't come"). However, this doubleness is also transferred to forms where the verbal copula is released and the negation is joined to the nominal form, and such a phrase can be ambiguous: nikdo nezraněn ("nobody unscathed") can mean both "nobody healthy" and "all healthy". Similarly, nepřítomen nikdo ("nobody absent") or plánovány byly tři úkoly, nesplněn žádný ("three tasks were planned, none uncompleted"). The sentence, všichni tam nebyli ("all don't were there") means not "all absented" but "there were not all" (= "at least one of them absenteed"). If all absented, it should be said nikdo tam nebyl ("nobody weren't there").Jiří Haller, V. Š.: O českém záporu. I, Naše řeč, ročník 32 (1948), číslo 2–3, s. 21–36 However, in many cases, a double, triple quadruple negative can really work in such a way that each negative cancels out the next negative, and such a sentence may be a catch and may be incomprehensible to a less attentive or less intelligent addressee. E.g. the sentence, nemohu se nikdy neoddávat nečinnosti ("I can't never not indulge in inaction") contains 4 negations and it is very confusing which of them create a "double negative" and which of them eliminated from each other. Such confusing sentences can then diplomatically soften or blur rejection or unpleasant information or even agreement, but at the expense of intelligibility: nelze nevidět ("it can't be not seen"), nejsem nespokojen ("I'm not dissatisfied"), není nezajímavý ("it/he is not uninteresting"), nemohu nesouhlasit ("I can't disagree").Tereza Filinová: Klady záporu, Český rozhlas (Czech Broadcasting), 2011 April 9
For instance, a statement "I have not ever owed anything to anyone" would be rendered as es nekad nevienam neko neesmu bijis parādā. The only alternative would be using a negating subordinate clause and subjunctive in the main clause, which could be approximated in English as "there has not ever been an instance that I would have owed anything to anyone" ( nav bijis tā, ka es kādreiz būtu kādam bijis kaut ko parādā), where negative pronouns (nekad, neviens, nekas) are replaced by indefinite pronouns (kādreiz, kāds, kaut kas) more in line with the English "ever, any" indefinite pronoun structures.
Something superficially resembling double negation is required also in Finnish language, which uses the auxiliary verb ei to express negation. Negative pronouns are constructed by adding one of the suffixes -an, -än, -kaan, or -kään to interrogative pronouns: Kukaan ei soittanut minulle means "No one called me". These suffixes are, however, never used alone, but always in connection with ei. This phenomenon is commonplace in Finnish, where many words have alternatives that are required in negative expressions, for example edes for jopa ("even"), as in jopa niin paljon meaning "even so much", and ei edes niin paljoa meaning "not even so much".
Of course, indirectness can also be employed to put an edge on one's rudeness as well. Whilst "He has studied Japanese, so he should be able to write kanji" can be phrased 彼は日本語を勉強したから漢字で書けないわけがない ( ), there is a harsher idea in it: "Because he studied Japanese, there is no reason he can't write Kanji".
A double negative almost always resolves to a positive meaning and even more so in colloquial speech where the speaker particularly stresses the first negative word. Meanwhile, a triple negative resolves to a negative meaning, which bears a stronger negativity than a single negative. For example, "我 不覺得 没有人 不知道" ( , "I do not think there is no one who does not know") ambiguously means either "I don't think everyone knows" or "I think someone does not know". A quadruple negative further resolves to a positive meaning embedded with stronger affirmation than a double negative; for example, "我 不是 不知道 没人 不喜欢他" (, "It is not the case that I do not know that no one does n't like him") means "I do know that everyone likes him". However, more than triple negatives are frequently perceived as obscure and rarely encountered.
In many cases, the original sense of the new negative particle is not negative per se (thus in French pas "step", originally "not a step" = "not a bit"). However, in Germanic languages such as English and German, the intermediate stage was a case of double negation, as the current negatives not and nicht in these languages originally meant "nothing": e.g. Old English ic ne seah "I didn't see" >> Middle English I ne saugh nawiht, lit. "I didn't see nothing" >> Early Modern English I saw not.Kastovsky, Dieter. 1991. Historical English syntax. p. 452Van Gelderen, Elly. 2006. A history of the English language. p. 130
A similar development to a circumfix from double negation can be seen in non-Indo-European languages, too: for example, in Maltese language, kiel "he ate" is negated as ma kielx "he did not eat", where the verb is preceded by a negative particle ma- "not" and followed by the particle -x, which was originally a shortened form of xejn "nothing" - thus, "he didn't eat nothing".
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