Trump the hypernegator?
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In addition to the many "nots" he uttered in last night's debate, Trump poured on the negations in this tweet today:
Hillary's been failing for 30 years in not getting the job done – it will never change.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2016
Many on Twitter were quick to accuse Trump of overnegation.
https://twitter.com/hunteronthehill/status/780781489525026817
So she has failed in NOT getting the job done?
Is… is this an endorsement?#Clinton2016 https://t.co/fuVHVJwOgg
— Southworth (@southworth) September 27, 2016
"Failing … in not getting the job done?" So she's getting the job done? https://t.co/4gax8Z8OpC
— Patrick O'Grady (@maddogmedia) September 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/zachshan/status/780781986109464576
Double Negative Donnie! SAD! https://t.co/qp99eyWYBR
— Jason Patt (@Bulls_Jay) September 27, 2016
Um… your double negative means you're saying Hillary has gotten the job done for the past 30 years and that won't change. Good to know!! https://t.co/wa4eS30OG0
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) September 27, 2016
You're right, Donald. She has been failing at not getting the job done. Appropriate double negative there. https://t.co/VHt9J3ojP4
— 🕷Dante Atkins🕷 (@DanteAtkins) September 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/ajchavar/status/780783689752014849
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/780786582311796736
That means she has been succeeding at getting the job done and will continue to do so, you double-negative-unaware saddle-goose. https://t.co/AbxIFjfrP7
— Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) September 27, 2016
So she's failing in not getting the job done.
Double negatives, Donald. Sad! https://t.co/zoPduYZJ2R
— Jon Danziger (@jondanziger) September 27, 2016
I ran this past the acknowledged master of negation, Yale linguist Larry Horn. Larry responded:
I guess there are two parses. If "in" = 'insofar as' or 'in respect to', it's what he meant. If it's a simple complementizer, equating to 'failing to not get the job done', yup, he's being hyper. But this is how hypernegation gets started in many cases. Consider "doubt…not", which used to be 'suspect not' or 'doubt that' as in this cite from Darwin (via Jespersen):
It never occurred to me to doubt that your work … would not advance our common object.
This would now be seen as hypernegation (as it was by me when I encountered it), presumably because of a reanalysis of "doubt" over the years.
Larry here refers to Otto Jespersen's Negation in English and other languages (1917) (see p. 75 on "paratactic negation"). For more along these lines, see Larry's 2009 BLS paper, "Hypernegation, Hyponegation, and Parole Violations" (handout here), as well as his comments in this 2007 Language Log post and this 2013 ADS-L discussion.
Guy said,
September 27, 2016 @ 1:39 pm
I'm inclined to read it as "in" being more or less replaceable with "by".
The usual preposition for complements of "fail" is "at", not "in", so I don't think it's a complement. And "in" does have an established meaning of something like "through the act of", or "with respect to".
AntC said,
September 27, 2016 @ 5:54 pm
Putting together the LL posts/comments on last night's debate, I suspect anybody who knows what is a double-negative would be branded an intellectual/politico by the Trumposphere, and part of the problem.
It's clear what Trump's tweet meant. If it also got up the noses of the clever-clogs twitterati, that's all to the good, I expect.
Lazar said,
September 27, 2016 @ 6:54 pm
Yeah, like Guy, I don't really find this one too bad. She's been failing for 30 years in that she hasn't been getting the job done (as it were).
JS said,
September 27, 2016 @ 7:05 pm
Yeah, don't have a problem with it. But "it will never change" definitely implies she'll be winning the election. And is immortal…
Rubrick said,
September 27, 2016 @ 10:45 pm
All the comments about "failing to fail" called to mind this lyric from CSN's "Southern Cross", which is surprisingly easy to parse, given the (sort of) triple negation: "And we never failed to fail; it was the easiest thing to do."