{"id":2012,"date":"2021-10-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tutor.engoo.com\/blog\/?p=2012"},"modified":"2021-10-19T10:25:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T10:25:18","slug":"double-negatives-word-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tutor.engoo.com\/blog\/curiosity\/double-negatives-word-order\/","title":{"rendered":"When Double Negatives Were Common and Word Order Mattered Not"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Have you ever heard the song \u201cAin't No Mountain High Enough\u201d? Or heard the phrase, \u201cain\u2019t nobody got time for that\u201d? If so, you\u2019ve come across every English teacher\u2019s arch nemesis: the double negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us who teach English have a fit when we hear the double negative. But for once, let\u2019s hold our horses! For much of history, the double negative was actually the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we\u2019ll take a look at two aspects of English grammar that were once shockingly different, and discuss what historical forms of English mean for us today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Double Negative<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Did you know that Shakespeare used the double negative? Here\u2019s a line from a play from 1593: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never was, nor never<\/strong> will be.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
In fact, Shakespeare even used triple negatives. Here\u2019s a line from another play:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have one heart, one bosom and one truth, \nAnd that no<\/strong> woman has; nor never none<\/strong> \nShall mistress be of it, save I alone. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Two centuries earlier, Chaucer had also used a triple negative in his Canterbury Tales.<\/em> The \u201cnas\u201d in the sentence below is like \u201cnever was.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Curteis he was and lowely of servyse. \nTher nas no man nowher<\/strong> so vertuous.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In fact, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>a scholar of Old English shares, \"I came across some beautiful examples of people actually `correcting' single negation to double negation at that time!\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when did all this change? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, the 18th century saw a rise of grammar guides, perhaps the most famous one being Lindley Murray's English Grammar<\/em>. To get an idea of how influential it was, just know that this guide was respected by writers like Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyways, guides like these often used Latin grammar as a model for English, and this is how the Latin rule that \"double negatives make a positive\" entered the English language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Word Order<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Nowadays, we take for granted that the basic structure of an English sentence is SVO ([subject] + [verb] + [object]). Modern English (1500-present) has a fixed word order and that word order is responsible for showing the relationships between the words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This means that if we change the word order in a sentence, its meaning changes too. For example, \u201cBob ate eggs\u201d means something totally different from \u201cEggs ate Bob.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, English a millennium ago wasn\u2019t as simple. Old English had a more flexible word order, because it could rely on word endings<\/a> to show the functions of the words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So while the verb usually came somewhere in the middle of the sentence, the subject and object could float around it, as long as they had the proper word endings. In other words, \u201cBob ate eggs\u201d could easily have been \u201cEggs ate Bob\u201d (\u201cEggs[+object ending] ate Bob[+subject ending].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By early Middle English (1100 to 1500), English word order had lost much of its flexibility, most likely due to long-term exposure to speakers of Celtic languages<\/a>. However, some of Old English remains with us today in sentences with negative adverbials<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n