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Two of them also use emphasis to make the meaning clearer. The last example is a popular example of a double negative that resolves to a positive. This is because the verb 'to doubt' has no intensifier which effectively resolves a sentence to a positive. Had we added an adverb thus: I never had no doubt this sentence is false.
The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle [7] [8] [9] or an item on a test, [1] [2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book Elements of Symbolic Logic as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.
By contrast, when a sentence is in spoken form and the verb involved is one of assertion, the use of that makes clear that the present speaker is making an indirect rather than a direct quotation, such that he is not imputing particular words to the person he describes as having made an assertion; the demonstrative adjective that also does not ...
If a word with a strong negative semantic prosody (e.g. onslaught) co-occurs with a positive word (e.g. hospitality) instead of an expected negative word (e.g. an onslaught of hospitality), a range of effects are possible as a result of such a collocational clash: [5] irony, expression of a subtle hidden meaning, often negative evaluation,
An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity. For example, the affirmative sentence "Joe is here" asserts that it is true that Joe is currently located near the speaker. Conversely, the negative sentence "Joe is not here" asserts that it is not true ...
The optional positions apply to the debatable pronoun and near synonym pairs any way/anyhow, some way/somehow, as well as to (in) no way, in every way. Examples: It was in some way(s) good; it was good in some ways; it was good somehow; it was somehow good. Certain adjectives are used fairly commonly in postpositive position.
Zeugma involves the linking of two or more words or phrases that occupy the same position in a sentence to another word or phrase in the same sentence. This can take advantage of the latter word having multiple meanings depending on context to create a clever use of language that can make the sentence and the claim thus advanced more eloquent ...
An idiom is an expression that has a figurative meaning often related, but different from the literal meaning of the phrase. Example: You should keep your eye out for him. A pun is an expression intended for a humorous or rhetorical effect by exploiting different meanings of words. Example: I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it ...