nothing = anything?

Yes. This is considered a "wrong usage" in that one would prefer to hear the speaker say "They don't like anything . . . " But this is, nonetheless, a common usage, even if many people consider it wrong.

Thanks

My dicts fail to explain that.

It's only considered "wrong", Ori, by folks who are ignorant of the workings of language.

Here's an excerpt from an excellent article on negation by one of the authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language [CGEL].

Ain't No Mountain High Enough......

People sound ignorant when they use double negation.

Do the French, [and the people of many other languages] who use negative concord sound 'ignorant'?

People who say things like this are ignorant, Infra.

Exactly. Whether or not people should consider double negatives to be wrong is irrelevant. What matters is that people do consider them wrong, and negatively judge those who use them.

You forgot the operative word, Set - ignorant people do consider them wrong. Who the hell cares about being judged by ignoramuses?

It comes as a major surprise to me that you happen to be among that ignorant crowd.

Dumb flat earthers are what these folks are!

dude, by putting in that "operative" word, you're being more than a touch judgmental yourself.

That's pretty hilarious. JTT poses as an expert on the English language, and has shown that it doesn't know a goddamned thing about Old English, from which our language derived. I suspect that this is another case of JTT's profound ignorance.

In the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries, English scholars decided that English grammar should be based on Latin. Nevermind that it was by then a dead language and had been hopelessly corrupted in the middle ages, they seemed to think that it would give some "tone" to the language. It went so far that English grammars were written in Latin. Students had to learn Latin in order to read the books which purported to teach them English grammar. Much of the nonsense of the grammatical rules propounded in that era have been ignored, and rightfully so. One is not supposed to split infinitives, to carelessly do so was considered a mark of ignorance. Well, in Latin, you not only don't split infinitives, you can't split a Latin infinitive, because they are single words. English, of course, forms the infinitive by putting "to" before the present indicative form. This is not a bad idea, either, because over the period from the formation of Old English, of Anglo-Saxon, to the rise of middle English, the hopeless confusion of inflections and spellings (up to 22 inflections were used in old Anglo-Saxon both for gender and number, in addition to mood) was gradually cleared up by the admirable expedient of simplifying orthography and usage. One of the more sensible moves was to use "to" to indicate an infinitive.

Some forms survive. The suffixes "-en" and "-ren" were used for plurals. So, we say parent/parents, cousin/cousins--but we say child/children, and in many contexts, bretheren is used rather than brothers. The same thing applies to verbs, which in Old English had their past participles formed with an "-en" suffix, and the doubling of the final consonant for any single syllable verb form. So, got/gotten. The English claim that "gotten" is a vile Americanism, but it's not, it's just a relict of Old English. They're being disingenuous too, although i suspect they don't know it--they use forgot/forgotten.

But many of these grammatical rules derived from the idiotic idea to use Latin grammar as a template for English have survived. The prohibition on double negatives is an example in which most English speakers have concurred, and whether or not that silly **** JTT likes it, most people consider the use of double negatives to be wrong.

What JTT actually knows about language in general and English in particular might, might i say, add up to one slim volume. It would take a small library to catalogue what it doesn't know about language, and especially about English.

We're talking about English here, not French.

It's ironic that you try to introduce other languages to support this argument of yours, when other times you preclude the use of other languages as a means to re-enforce certain gramatical rules (e.g. ruling out the example of Latin to in regard to the use of split infinitives in English).

Your arguments are more arbitrary than the rules you mean to depricate.

...amazing as it is, sometimes trivial truths prove to be educative and pedagogical, even informative on a state of mind and spirit...

No, I'm not, Beth. The facts show that. It is complete ignorance of the workings of the English language.

Please don't tell me that you are trying to make a case for the split infinitive, Infra. That would only compound your ignorance.

No, I'm pointing out your arbitrariness when you point to other languages for one of your arguments, but rule out other languages for other arguments of yours.

My "profound ignorance" on the English language is exactly what sent you scurrying like the timid little **** you are to the safety of 'ignore'.

It was you, Setanta, that attempted to defend all these nonsensical ideas about language with the doubly nonsensical idea that people should be allowed to peeve. That's all you did to try to defend the nonsense. You never, ever, addressed the language issues. You might have done what you've done here, provide some lengthy piece of historical crap, but then that is your forte, isn't it?



Note Set's use of 'might'; he wants to illustrate that my knowledge is at a low level, hence his use of 'might'. And yet, this language guru argued in another thread that 'may' and 'might' are equals in their epistemic/level of certainty meanings.

He is one confused little puppy.

Actually, i've never used the ignore feature. I don't scurry away from you or anyone else. You are a foul, disgusting, obsessive hater of anyone who doesn't agree with you. Your hatred of the United States is a wonderful example, in that you know so little about its history, and if you did, you'd have even more scope for your bile. May and might is a wonderful example. Although you tout yourself as a "descriptivist," you have your own pet peeves which you won't acknowledge. In everyday usage, English speakers use may and might interchangeably--whether you like it or not. I'm sure i'll regret not ignoring your bullshit, but having been drawn in, you can bet that there's nothing in the drivel you puke up to drive me away.

That wasn't my argument but no one is being arbitrary. You made the lame argument that using negative concord makes people sound ignorant. Clearly that shows that you are the ignorant one.

Negative concord is a feature of some dialects of English just as it is a feature of many languages. It is, of course, also a feature of nonstandard English, which is something that you use everyday, for most of your English use. Does that make you sound ignorant?

It's not ignorance to follow the grammatical structure of your dialect. To make such a suggestion brings us to your own dialect. It has morphed a fair measure from BrE. Does that make you sound ignorant?

No, it makes you sound obstinately asinine when you ignore the facts that the standard usage isn't dialectical, and that the usage of nonstandard English does not preclude the fact that double negation sounds ignorant.