Double negative
[1] Lithuanian, Portuguese, Persian, French, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Icelandic, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, and Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages.
[2][3] Chinese,[4] Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English[5] are examples of languages that do not have negative concord.
"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).
For this reason, it is difficult to portray double negatives in writing as the level of intonation to add weight in one's speech is lost.
A double negative intensifier does not necessarily require the prescribed steps, and can easily be ascertained by the mood or intonation of the speaker.
This rule was observed as early as 1762, when Bishop Robert Lowth wrote A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes.
Indeed, they were used in Middle English: for example, Chaucer made extensive use of double, triple, and even quadruple negatives in his Canterbury Tales.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[21] In the Harry Enfield sketch "Mr Cholmondley-Warner's Guide to the Working-Class", a stereotypical Cockney employs a septuple-negative: "Inside toilet?
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.
Afrikaans shares with English the property that two negatives make a positive:[citation needed] 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.
Like some dialects of English, Bavarian has both single and double negation, with the latter denoting special emphasis.
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".
(roughly "never ever") corresponds to Bavarian "(går) nia ned" or even "nie nicht" in the Standard German pronunciation.
This initial usage spread so thoroughly that it became a necessary element of any negation in the modern French language[23] to such a degree that ne is generally dropped entirely, as in Je sais pas.
Standard Catalan 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".
In literary Welsh, the mutated verb form is caused by an initial negative particle, ni or nid.
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.
In Bulgarian, it is: никога не съм виждал никого никъде [nikoga ne sam vishdal nikogo nikade], lit.
In Russian, "I know nothing" is я ничего не знаю [ya nichevo nye znayu], lit.
Similarly, nepřítomen nikdo ("nobody absent") or plánovány byly tři úkoly, nesplněn žádný ("three tasks were planned, none uncompleted").
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").
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.
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" (Wǒ bú shì bù zhīdào méi rén bù xǐhuan tā, "It is not the case that I do not know that no one doesn't like him") means "I do know that everyone likes him".
