Question, question or two...

[conuly]

Okay, because I'm a broken record. Two things seem to be a common (and pollable) theme in the recent angsty discussion.

1. "If language changes, eventually we'll have lots of incomprehensible languages instead of just one"
2. "Double negatives are confusing, because two negatives can make a positive".

Now, the first one is pretty much true. Look what happened to Latin, or to Chinese (now Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) However, the question isn't "is this true" but "do we care?". After all, in other places people *expect* to be multi-lingual, to know five or six languages. And we could always go the IAL route, have one auxlang that's not anybody's native language and let the rest of it all go its way.

The second one, I just don't believe. I don't think *anybody* has ever actually gotten confused when hearing a double negative. I know for a fact that it used to be an accepted part of the English language (which, yes, means that the educated classes said it) and that it's a required part of many other languages now. Edit: That's not true. I can certainly believe that *some* people have. However, I don't believe that any native speaker with normal language development has, and I'm fairly certain that most non-native speakers haven't, unless they had a well-meaning (but ill-informed) language instructer tell them that "In English two negatives are a positive", when the reality is "In English, two negatives are a negative, but this usage is considered to be uneducated".

So, poll!

[Poll #409457]

You all know my view by now, so it was hard for me to keep my bias out of this poll. My apologies.

Edit: Wow. I'm honestly surprised. I didn't expect *anybody* would pick "yes, recently, native speaker". Okay, I'm not too surprised with Moggy, because she's not typical I think, but the other (can't spell name gah)? I wasn't expecting that. I still think that my case still stands, most people are never gonna get confused by this usage after childhood. Keep voting, of course. I'm just chattering.

Comments

[queenmargot.livejournal.com]

I said I got confused and am a native speaker, but I'm thinking of typically confusing conversations anyway. Like someone saying, "Didn't you not go?" or something like that, and then someone responding, "No." And then it's all confusing, so it's better to just start the question off in a positive light. And, yes, double negatives used to be the norm in English. It wasn't until the 18th century (I think?), when everything started getting all math-y that someone said, "Ah! Language must be like math! Therefore two negatives=a postive and that's bad!"

French actually developed the double negative. (I'm getting all this from my intro to linguistics course; the professor is a historical linguist.) "Ne" used to be the only word needed to form a negative ("ne" and "pas" go around the verb to negate it, in case you didn't know). Then, they took the phrase "ne marche pas" (I forget why) and for some reason started using the "pas" (which means step) as part of the negative. Voilà! Language change. ;)

[conuly]

Ah, okay. Connie = not the queen of historical linguistics. Actually, historical linguistics = really boring most of the time mihi, so.

[queenmargot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally hated my History of English class last semester. My intro professor was really kick ass, and I enjoyed it when she was talking about it. But it was more of... ya know how if a teacher is really excited about the subject matter and it's just infectious? It was one of those type deals. But those two things I talked about were the only slightly interesting things I've learned from historical linguistics.

[conuly]

It happens.

And, in general, I like etymology. That's just the *only* thing I like about the subject, at all. And then only when etymology means reading my dictionary.

[queenmargot.livejournal.com]

Hahahahah.

Well, I must admit, I can be amused with etymology now that I know the mechanizations of Grimm's Law. But only for a little while.