What about double positives? Anecdote: An MIT linguistics professor was lecturin... | Hacker News

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		scandox on Dec 18, 2020 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: How I Met My Wife (1994) What about double positives? Anecdote: An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative." A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

cafard on Dec 18, 2020 [–]

Some year ago, the obit for a CCNY philosophy professor attributed the counter-example to him.

This may be one of those quips that is simply untraceable.

scandox on Dec 18, 2020 | [–]

I heard it was Sydney Morgenbesser

cafard on Dec 18, 2020 | | [–]

That sounds right--I see he got an article in the Times end-of-year "The Lives They Lived" issue in 2004.

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