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An overnegation that isn't hard to miss

Headline from the Los Angeles Times: "South Korea's obsession with speedskating isn't hard to miss."

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Creative overnegation

Today's Zits: …plus the obligatory link to the Misnegation Archive.

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Overnegation of the week

Daniel J. Wakin, "Met Reverses Itself on Reviews Ban by Opera News", NYT 5/22/2012: The Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday backed away from its decision to bar reviews of its productions in Opera News, its affiliated magazine and the leading opera publication in the country. The Met said an “outpouring of reaction” from opera fans on […]

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Prophylactic over-negation

Almost the end of January, and not a single Language Log reader hasn't failed to complain about the lack of over-negation in any of this year's posts. But here's some naughtily nutty negation anyway: "It's not that I don't doubt the sincerity of their desire to protect the talent. And believe it or not, we have […]

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Multiple negation: over-reaching again

Following up on Never fails: semantic over-achievers, Language Log reader John O'Meara told me that he recently received a gift voucher on which one of the legally binding conditions is the following: 6. Cash nor credit will not be issued for balance of gift voucher not redeemed in full. He has absolutely no clear sense […]

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A classic overnegation

Miguel Helft, "Twins’ Facebook Fight Rages On", NYT 12/30/2010 (emphasis added): As they talked about the Facebook case, no detail was too small to omit, from where they first met Mr. Zuckerberg (the Kirkland House dining room) to the layout of Mr. Zuckerberg’s dorm room, to the content of the e-mails he had sent them […]

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Electoral overnegation

This post from Amy Hamblin's Community Blog was on the front page of the Obama-Biden web site for a while last night: We're still awaiting the final results tonight, but one thing is clear — this grassroots movement can never be underestimated. Thank you to everyone who helped us make an astounding 1,053,791 calls today! […]

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Foundation misnegation

From Antonio Fortin: I’m re-reading Asimov's Foundation novels after nearly 35 years and I came across this example in Book 1, which just seems like a mess: “I don’t say, though,” added Barr, “that there aren’t cases where tech-men haven’t been bribed.” Obviously, the intended message is that there are cases where tech-men have been […]

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Three negations in one headline

From François-Michel Lang, "I had to read the article to be sure I understood what exactly had happened!"   G.O.P. Lawmakers Override Kentucky Governor’s Veto on Anti-Trans Law   The Kentucky measure bans access to gender-transition care for young people, and West Virginia’s governor signed a similar bill on Wednesday. Passage of bans also appears […]

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Another misnegation/miscomparison

From Breffni O'Rourke,  another example of the conceptual tangle created by the interaction of scalar comparison and (implicit) negation: Just another one of these. There's no outright negation, but it seems related – the implied negative of "only" interacting with the scalar comparison "more slowly". The arithmetic comes out with the wrong sign in any […]

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Nonnegation

In reading texts from the earliest times of Chinese writing up to the present, and at all social levels and linguistic registers, I have noticed a curious phenomenon.  Namely, often an overtly negative particle or term will have no privative or prohibitive force, but is simply there for rhythmic, clitic, or rhetorical function. Naturally, since […]

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Athletic misnegation

"Can the Angels keep Shohei Ohtani? A payroll crisis looms in Los Angeles", 8/12/2021: Everything Shohei Ohtani has accomplished this summer is unprecedented: the high-end pitching and high-impact hitting, the takeover of the two days of All-Star events, the marketability. With a season résumé that looks like none other, he'll win the American League's Most […]

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Annals of stacked negation

Garrett Wollman writes: Not sure if this really belongs in LL's misnegation files, but I found this sentence hard enough to parse (despite knowing exactly what the author meant) that I stumbled over it on a re-read: "The really troubling thing," Zora says to the rain, "is that I can't convince myself I'm not in […]

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