Negation plus exclusion: a dangerous pairing
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At least twice here on Language Log, we've looked at combinations of negation and exclusion that might be seen as overnegation (exclusion being a covert negative).
Case 1, rather complex, discussed here:
I've never known him to be anything but less than precise on discussing cases.
Case 2, even more complex, discussed here and here:
That should remove all doubt that our policies are designed for any reason other than evil.
And now (courtesy of A K M Adam), from the Duke Chronicle, case 3:
"We were under no illusions going into 2008 that it was going to be anything other than easy," said Brent Woodcox, spokesperson for the North Carolina Republican Party.
All three have any-quantification with a negative: the adverb never plus the pronoun anything in case 1, the covertly negative verb doubt plus the determiner any in case 2, the determiner no plus the pronoun anything in case 3. Then in combination with the any-quantification there's an exclusion phrase, with but in case 1, with other than in cases 2 and 3 (except would be another possibility).
Exclusion expressions are covertly negative: "I would accept anyone but Kim" and I would accept anyone other than Kim" both convey 'I would accept anyone who is not Kim' and also 'I would not accept Kim'. This is already complex, but adding an external negative to the mix produces an even more complex result: "I wouldn't accept anyone but Kim" (which could mean either 'It's not the case that I would accept anyone but Kim' or 'I would reject anyone but Kim', depending on how the negative is scoped).
But at least in cases 1 and 3, it seems clear that this is not really what the speaker intended, though it takes some effort to work that out.
I don't have anything new to say about case 2, which Mark Liberman discussed at length in the two postings linked to above. It has the extra complexity of the covertly negative "that should remove all doubt", conveying 'there should be no doubt'. Mark entertained three possibilities: that the speaker was overnegating, that he was saying exactly what he intended to say, and that the sentence was ambiguous.
Cases 1 and 3, however, are decidedly wonky. In case 1, "but less than precise" might have been intended as emphatic; that would be routine overnegation, with an exclusion phrase in addition to an external negative. On the other hand, as Mark Liberman proposed, the sentence might be a syntactic blend, of two alternative expressions for the intended meaning:
… to be anything but less than precise [attested]
… to be anything less than precise [no internal negative]
… to be anything but precise [exclusion]
Case 3 could conceivably be treated as a syntactic blend, of two alternative expressions for the intended meaning:
… under no illusions … that it was going to be anything other than easy [attested]
… under no illusions … that it was going to be easy [no internal negative]
… under no illusions … that it was going to be anything other than difficult [exclusion]
On the other hand, the exclusion could have been grafted onto the easy version, for emphasis: overnegation.
As we observe from time to time here on Language Log, baffling examples often could have arisen in more than one way (and there's no way to decide what the mechanism was in any particular instance).