"I didn’t save you because you’re not important."
« previous post | next post »
[This is a guest post from Brett Powley]
I ran into something recently that I thought might be log-worthy. My wife was watching Van Helsing, the TV series, and I heard one of the characters say this:
I didn’t save you because you’re not important.
Now, what he meant was:
I wouldn’t have saved you if you weren’t important.
But the more I thought about this, the more I realised that he said exactly the opposite of what he meant. I wondered why I got the ‘right’ interpretation of this the first time, rather than the plain reading which would be something like:
You’re not important, so I didn’t save you.
There seems to be some sort of counterfactual going on here, but what made me interpret it that way when, as far as I know, the normal English markers for counterfactuals weren’t there? Is “didn’t” enough, in the right context, to be a counterfactual? Or is it really just context?
Selected readings
- "Modals of life and death" (8/22/09)
- "Real debate about unreal worlds" (8/12/08)
- "'A year ago, we don't win tonight." (4/17/15)
James said,
August 25, 2024 @ 6:35 am
I'm not familiar with the movie or the line, and I suspect the prosody is informative, but here's my under-informed take:
The "didn't" is negating "because". That is, he means
Compare:
Rosencrantz said,
August 25, 2024 @ 6:50 am
You say his meaning was "I wouldn’t have saved you if you weren’t important."
But maybe this phrasing stops a little short of that, all the speaker is committing to is that he saved them because they were important without having to commit either way to the counterfactual. He could have just said that but this way it carries the suggestion that the listener should be able to figure out his motivation without making him say it.
Jenny Chu said,
August 25, 2024 @ 7:47 am
I certainly misinterpreted it when I read your title. James seems to have the correct understanding: the "not" negates the "because".
"It's not because you're unimportant that I saved you!"
In other words, it's because you are important that I saved you.
Student said,
August 25, 2024 @ 8:12 am
James's prosody explanation is likely correct. I too haven't seen the clip, but to say this weird twice negative I would have intonated the clauses. There are at least two successful ways to intonate the sentence, I think.
David Marjanović said,
August 25, 2024 @ 8:54 am
I didn’t save you {because you’re not important}. That's why you're dead now.
I didn’t {save you because you’re not important}. I saved you because you are.
Gregory Kusnick said,
August 25, 2024 @ 8:58 am
That may well be what the speaker meant in context, but it doesn't actually follow from what was said. It might be factually true that the person being addressed is unimportant, but was saved anyway for other reasons.
Linda Seebach said,
August 25, 2024 @ 9:38 am
"Not/because" sentences are syntactically ambiguous.
"I don't . . ." can turn out to mean either that you do drink coffee or that you don't, depending on what follows. Commonly the reason is that a negative in the following clause has moved into the main clause, but that's so common ("I don't think . . .") that people start their sentences and then finish them with a reason which retains its own negative, and then it can be even more confusing, because there are three possible readings, not just two.
Charles in Toronto said,
August 25, 2024 @ 10:10 am
In general there is a relatively common construction of that "didn't (something that was actually done)" form. e.g.:
I didn't put you through 4 years of university just to watch you slack off.
Your father didn't get you a dog for ME to take care of all the time.
But maybe in "I didn’t save you because you’re not important." it's just a little harder to tell that it's this type of construction.
Milan said,
August 25, 2024 @ 12:35 pm
The intended literal meaning is 'It is not the case that I saved you because you are not important'. It's common ground that the speaker did save the hearer. Thus, this implies 'It is not because you are not important that I saved you'. This is a litotes for 'I saved you because you are important'.
Gregory Kusnick said,
August 25, 2024 @ 2:12 pm
Suppose we replace "not important" with "red hair". I don't think anyone would argue that "I didn't save you because you have red hair" is a roundabout way of saying "I saved you because you don't have red hair.". In this case, the red hair is a given; what's being said is that hair color is not a plausible reason for saving or not saving someone.
On the "I saved you because you're important" reading, the implied corollary is that heroes can't be bothered saving unimportant people, which is hardly reassuring to someone who feels unimportant.
Xtifr said,
August 25, 2024 @ 2:44 pm
I think context is key here. Let's simplify it by only using one negative:
"I didn't throw rocks at you because I like you."
That changes meaning if you did just throw rocks at the person! It becomes a counterfactual if and only if it contradicts facts!
TNE said,
August 25, 2024 @ 2:58 pm
Here are a few "not/because" sentences I've encountered in the wild. In my observation they are invariably followed up by a clarification that resolves the ambiguity.
"That is to say, queers—real-life ones—do not deserve representation, protection, and rights because they are morally pure or upright as a people(12). They deserve those things because they are human beings, and that is enough." – In The Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado
"I'm not intellectually superior because I have a blue check mark. I'm intellectually superior because I'm not ruled by emotion." – Twitter user @LVCabChronicles, https://x.com/courtneymilan/status/1578483443880833025
"I don't want to quit Twitter because Elon Musk is bad (although he is)." – Metafilter user Jeanne, https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26277/Will-Musks-defense-of-Scott-Adams-make-you-leave#1415331
"I don’t say this with frustration because my mother’s life isn’t a good, beautiful life — it is! If you ask her, she’ll tell you she wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world. No, I say this with frustration because I saw myself and my husband as different[…] but were we?" – Maggie Smith, https://www.thecut.com/article/book-excerpt-you-could-make-this-place-beautiful-maggie-smith.html
"Eich didn't lose the CEO's job for his (reprehensible) Prop-8 donation. Everyone wants to believe that's true […] but that's not what happened." – mhoye, https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/112281966342068713
These ones are all counterfactual — "Not X because Y" where X is true.
This is the only one I have that is straightforward and X is in fact false:
"You’re not being promoted because you are polyamorous. […] 'So you can’t have your girlfriend here because the customers don’t like that. […] the reason why we haven’t promoted you to general manager is because of that.'" – Reddit user Wrecked_Angles, https://www.reddit.com/r/polyamory/comments/apajg8/youre_not_being_promoted_because_you_are/
Milan said,
August 25, 2024 @ 5:35 pm
@Gregory Kusnick
It only implicates, but does not entail that superheroes don't bother saving unimportant people. They may simply have different reasons for saving the likes of us. In any case, there is also the sentimental rejoinder that everybody is important!
Brett Powley said,
August 25, 2024 @ 5:47 pm
A few interesting things that people have pointed out here:
(1) These are syntactically ambiguous
(2) “I didn’t X” where X is something that I actually did is idiomatic
(3) Whether the “didn’t” in “I didn’t X because Y” negates the “because” or the “X” might depend on whether there is common ground about whether Y is a counterfactual.
The thing that made me curious about this at first was that it wasn’t ambiguous until I started overthinking it.
Some more examples, some counterfactuals, some not, whose natural interpretation I think are on opposite sides of this:
“I didn’t take an umbrella because it’s not raining”
“I didn’t take an umbrella because it’s a fashion accessory”
“I didn’t save you because you’re not important”
“I didn’t save you because you’re not worth the effort”
“I didn’t save you because I was busy washing my hair”
Xtifr said,
August 25, 2024 @ 6:11 pm
I don't think "I wouldn't have saved you if you weren't important" is an accurate reading. I think "I might not have saved you if you weren't important, but you are important, so I did" is better.
However, it occurs to me that there is yet another possible interpretation: "I saved you despite your importance!" :)
Bart Barry said,
August 25, 2024 @ 10:52 pm
"I didn’t save you because you’re not important"
We have two qualities being negated here: saving you and importance.
Removing the negations gives us, "I did save you because you are important."
This last can be taken as the opposite of the original.
So, as always with language,it comes down to context, and I have no idea what led up to the original line or what followed it. Was there a just-completed saving? If there was, then the implication that you are reckoned not important enough to save can be dispensed with, being undercut by the save. If it were done, the save validates your importance, and, wordlessly, supports the opposite of what was said.
Only context can resolve the precise weight of irony to be applied if the opposite of what is meant is being said here. As Van Helsing the TV series is mercifully not available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, I'm forced to hand off further exploration of this matter to others better equipped to carry on.
rosie said,
August 26, 2024 @ 12:13 am
As Linda Seebach pointed out, "I didn't do A because B" has two readings. But here the speaker said "I didn't do A because not B" but meant "I did A because B". This is neither of those two readings; it is just negation gone wrong. Here we might guess that something is amiss: someone being unimportant can't be the reason someone else might try to save them. But in other circumstances the listener might not be so lucky. If someone says "I didn't vote for Smith because he's not trustworthy", I can't be expected to understand that they meant "I voted for Smith because he's trustworthy".
Edward Ash said,
August 26, 2024 @ 5:52 am
Isn't it a llitotes? The positive being I saved you because you are important.
Cirk R. Bejnar said,
August 26, 2024 @ 9:18 am
As always context is king. In isolation, the most natural reading of the sentence is that the speaker left the listener to her fate because of her unimportance. But in context, where the speaker has already saved the listener, the other opposite reading is clearly implied. The speaker did did save the listener, because she is not "not important", which as others have remarked is a reasonably clear litotes for is, in fact, of great importance.
Brett Powley said,
August 26, 2024 @ 7:21 pm
@Edward Ash wouldn't a litotes be "I saved you because you're not unimportant" ?
I'm starting to think that this is a mixture of an idiom, multiple negatives, and a counterfactual where the surprising thing is that we (effortlessly, unless you're the sort of person who reads a blog like this and overthinks it) make sense of it at all.