(Untitled)

[wyrdmuse]

Double negatives cancel each other out and make a positive statement, right? What about triple negatives? I was watching TV the other night and an ad for SciFi's newest cheesy movie (not the good kind of cheese either) comes on. The guy, some badass prisoner, rambles on about seeing strange things and then he says "I ain't never seen nothing

Comments

Hmm...I think it depends on which part never is attached to...

[vistani]

Let's parse this sucker out. First, we'll get rid of "ain't" and use "Have not", that should avoid some confusion.

"I ain't never seen nothing like that before" becomes "I have not never seen nothing like that before."

If we attach never to nothing: "never seen nothing" means "have seen something"; so, our sentence now is "I have not have seen something". For clarity's sake, let's get rid of that second have; we don't really need it "I have not seen something like that before." That makes perfect sense, except for the use of "something" where "anything" should be.

Or we could attach never to have not: "have not never" means "have at sometime", or just "have". "I have seen nothing like that before." This makes sense, too, although if it was me, I'd put the negative on have and change nothing to anything.

So, we start with a negative, give another negative, which makes a positive, then add another negative, which makes a negative...? I'm bad at algebra.

"I ain't never seen nothing like that before" then, if not grammatically correct, means what it was intended to mean. That the speaker has not seen anything like that before.

Okay, now my brain hurts.