Re: Double negation -- (Conrad's Triple negative)

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From	"HenHanna" <HenHanna@Posting.from.CsiPh>
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Subject	Re: Double negation -- (Conrad's Triple negative)
Date	Sun, 31 May 2026 00:13:29 +0000
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"HenHanna" <HenHanna@Posting.from.CsiPh> wrote:
> 
> ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:
> >   The meaning of "double negation" as in "We don't need no education"
> >   often is negation. But recently I read an example where it seems to
> >   be actually meant to be double negation in the logical sense:
> > 
> >   Seemingly from a transcript:
> > 
> > |. . . The more important thing is what it doesn't say.
> > |It doesn't say you're not allowed to automate the kill chain.
> > |So you're allowed to do that? You are not not allowed to do that.
> > 
> >   .
> > 
> 
> 
>       [not not]  (used that way)  is  not usu. considered...  a
> double-negative (iirc)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ____________________________________________________________
> From	"Peter T. Daniels"  (10 years ago)
>  
> A snippet of dialog  from this evening's *Chicago Fire*:
> 
> ^^^^^^^
> Firefighter A: It isn't your job.
> 
> Firefighter B [feeling guilty about not telling a woman that he knew 
> that her husband had been killed in the tornado]: The hell it isn't.
> ^^^^^^^
> 
> I think "the hell" is more usually used to negate a positive?
> 
>  
> ------------ B is saying that he should have mentioned it.


       Did PTD  have a point?

____________


Ross Clark says>>>    The two "not"s in your second example are in
different clauses, so it is not an case of the "double negation"
famously disapproved of by school  grammar.


 [not not]  (used that way)  is  not usu. considered...  a
double-negative (iirc)  in  school  English class...


       ---------  Teachers will differentiate between bad slang ("I
didn't see nobody") and intentional, sophisticated literary devices
called litotes. Litotes use a double negative to express an ironic
understatement:

          Example: "The test results were not ungenerous."


__________


(iirc... Conard uses this a lot)



(Conrad's  Triple negative) 

         Conrad frequently wrote sentences where a negative verb, a
negative adverb, and an inherently negative adjective or noun all
collided in a single thought. You have to actively untangle the math to
understand what he means.

         Conrad's prose:

(fake Examle) "It was not impossible to believe he was not a savage.

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Re: Double negation "HenHanna" <HenHanna@Posting.from.CsiPh> - 2026-05-30 19:27 +0000
  Re: Double negation The True Melissa <thetruemelissa@gmail.com> - 2026-05-30 16:41 -0400
    Re: Double negation Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> - 2026-05-31 11:49 +1000
      Re: Double negation Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> - 2026-05-31 05:21 +0200
    Re: Double negation Mikko <mikko.levanto@iki.fi> - 2026-05-31 11:31 +0300
  Re: Double negation  -- (Conrad's  Triple negative) "HenHanna" <HenHanna@Posting.from.CsiPh> - 2026-05-31 00:13 +0000

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