Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus
There's the story of a linguistics professor explaining to his class that different languages may or may not have double negatives, and the meaning of a double negative might be different or ambiguous depending on the context: however, there are no such problems with double positives.
In response to which, one of his students shouted, "Yeah. Right."
|
That joke is funny, but it is true that there is no general rule that double positives have an opposite meaning (generally, more positives = more strongly positive, although most of the time the positive meaning is unmarked so a sentence that's positive throughout usually simply lacks any negative markings).
Sarcasm can come into play, but sarcasm is layered
over the literal meaning, which in the case of "yeah, right" has become so conventionalized that the phrase itself is assumed to be sarcastic without the use of sarcastic tone. But that doesn't transfer over to "yes, correct" which is the same meaning literally, with synonyms. In order for "yes, correct" to mean the same thing, you'd have to put on a clear sarcastic tone.
But in Spanish or colloquial English, the rules on double (really, multiple) negatives aren't limited to some frozen expressions. "I didn't do nothing" and "I ain't go nowhere", "I ain't see nobody nowhere" etc. all work the same way, and the same for Spanish equivalents "
no hice
nada", "
no fui a
ninguna parte", "
no vi a
nadie a
ningún lado", etc.
There is something weird with some more recent English responses with "yeah, no" and "no, yeah" which is another matter though, as those aren't double negatives or positives...