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A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence ("You're not unattractive" vs "You're attractive").
Two examples of affirmation include (1) John is here already [4] and (2) I am a moral person. [5] These two sentences are truth statements, and serve as a representation of affirmation in English. The negated versions can be formed as the statements (1 NEG) John is not here already and (2 NEG) I am not a moral person. (1) a.
In rhetoric, litotes (/ l aɪ ˈ t oʊ t iː z, ˈ l aɪ t ə t iː z /, US: / ˈ l ɪ t ə t iː z /), [1] also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect.
Their functions as word sentence responses to yes–no questions are taken up by sentence adverbs, single adverbs that are sentence modifiers and also used as word sentences. There are several such adverbs classed as truth-value adverbs—including certe , fortasse , nimirum , plane , vero , etiam , sane , videlicet , and minime (negative).
There are two predicates in each of the verb chains in the sentences. Do-support is needed when the higher of the two is negated; it is not needed to negate the lower nonfinite predicate. For negated questions, see the questions section above. For negated elliptical sentences, see the elliptical sentences section below.
For example, anywhere is an NPI corresponding to the negative nowhere, as used in the following sentences: I was going nowhere. (the negative nowhere is used when not preceded by another negative) I was not going anywhere. (the NPI anywhere is used in the environment of the preceding negative not)
In propositional logic, the double negation of a statement states that "it is not the case that the statement is not true". In classical logic, every statement is logically equivalent to its double negation, but this is not true in intuitionistic logic; this can be expressed by the formula A ≡ ~(~A) where the sign ≡ expresses logical equivalence and the sign ~ expresses negation.
A negative answer, commonly expressed with the word no A type of grammatical construction; see affirmative and negative A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence.