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Everything about Double negative

Grammatical construction such as 'not nothing'

In linguistics and semantics, 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. 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, French, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Icelandic, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, and Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of modern English. Chinese, Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, negative concord occurs in a minority of languages. Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: Double negativeA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Zolbetuximab plus mFOLFOX6 in patients with CLDN18.2-positive, HER2-negative, untreated, locally advanced unresectable or metastatic gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma (SPOTLIGHT): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, phase 3 trialInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: Double negativeThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: Double-negative acoustic metamaterialCited 1,022 times
  5. Go sideways: Affirmation and negationA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Bulgarian grammarA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun A phrase including two negative words (no, not, never, etc.) especially when used as intensifiers in informal English.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. English
  2. Other Germanic languages
  3. Latin and Romance languages
  4. Welsh
  5. Greek
  6. Slavic languages
  7. Baltic languages
  8. Uralic languages
  9. Turkish
  10. Japanese
  11. Chinese
  12. Historical development

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

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