Practice question · True or false
Negative concord, "I do not know nothing", is a feature of the grammar of several English varieties rather than a logical error.
Hints
- Ask whether other languages do the same thing systematically.
- French, Spanish, Russian and Old English all require it.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Negative concord is the norm in French, Spanish, Russian and Old English, and is used consistently in many English varieties. The "two negatives make a positive" argument imports a rule of formal logic into a system that never claimed to obey it, and if it held, "nobody never said nothing" would be a positive assertion, which no speaker takes it to be.
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More questions on What Linguistics Studies
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