Great video on The Linguistics of African American vernacular.

[nixkid]

wait, so people are aguing that slang, particularly the improper use of grammer, syntax, tense, and person just becomes the norm, in effect negating all the long held rules of formal writing?

That be absurd

AAVE is not the same thing as slang. AAVE has formal rules and it has existed in some form for hundreds of years. Probably as long as Standard American English.

 

[Rod1]

I tried to look it up, but it's not that easy to find the answer. Wiki gives the classic explanation, that it was 17th/18th century English prescriptivism, with the rise of mass education, following Latin logical structures (it cannot have been from ethnic German influence, btw, because its loss is common to English-English as well).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative#English

However I've seen other sources indicating that this isn't really historically correct, and the double negative was already being excluded from English for internal functional reasons, i.e. it doesn't really play nicely with Germanic grammar, which is why none of the other West Germanic languages allow it. So it was a sort of temporary innovation in English that didn't ever take very well.

In other languages, it might work fine, because you have other ways of making the point clear potentially, but in English I really think the use of double negation tends to impede long logical sentences. To be clear, you end up needing other devices to signal that it's 'emphatic double negation' and not 'negating double negation,' and this just makes a mess of things.

So it seems more like a conflict between germanic languages meeting with romance languages leaving instances where both rules applied and context meant everything at that point i can see why it would be better to drop it.

 

[IDL]

So you are claiming that base 10 is absolute and there couldnt be any system besides base 10 beccause we absolutely cant have more than 10 digits?

Because thats retarded, abstract things are abstract because they dont exist in the real world, logic exists indeed, but the way we translate an abstract idea into a language we can understand is indeed a social construct.

The way the mayans and the greeks did math was completely different even if they came to the same conclusions and worked with the same concepts.

There are different ways of doing math. ok?

I can't tell if you are arguing against the mathematical qualities of a double negative equaling a positive or not.

Nothing can have mathematical qualities.. Not even math!

 

[dontsnitch]

There is no such thing as proper English. There are many English dialects and Standard American English is just one. "I be in the WR too much" doesn't conform to Standard American English but that doesn't make it improper.

If it doesn't conform to Standard English, it is improper in the context of Standard English, in which there are rules to follow.

 

[Rod1]

There are different ways of doing math. ok?

I can't tell if you are arguing against the mathematical qualities of a double negative equaling a positive or not.

Nothing can have mathematical qualities.. Not even math!

There are different ways to do math but only one way to speak?

 

[IDL]

There are different ways to do math but only one way to speak?

What? Who ever said that?

This is one of the most dysfunctional conversations I've had in awhile

 

[nixkid]

If it doesn't conform to Standard English, it is improper in the context of Standard English, in which there are rules to follow.

Sure but you didn't say that. You said its improper English not improper Standard American English.

 

[Rod1]

What? Who ever said that?

This is one of the most dysfunctional conversations I've had in awhile

You did? you claim that all languages that dont treat a double negative as multiplicative to be mathematically flawed and illogical.

You seem also unable to separate the universal concept of math from the math language currently in use.

As there are ways to do math with their own rules to express the same concepts, there are different ways to speak with their own rules to express the same concept.

You are a programmer dont you?

Do you think that for example a code that throttles the available bandwidth of a download program which ask for the limit and says 0 = unlimited to be mathematically impossible and thus unable to be coded?

Because thats exactly how a double negative works in spanish.

You dont know = X where, nothing = everything.

You dont know nothing, in this case makes perfect sense since the same phrase can be used for determining ignorance in a certain subject.

Also the phrase you dont know everything may imply that you know something but not all so its not applicable, either.

English has anything, which translates into cualquier cosa, but cualquier cosa may also mean everything, like in "i can do anything you do".

 

[dontsnitch]

Sure but you didn't say that. You said its improper English not improper Standard American English.

The English which is universally taught in schools.

 

[IDL]

You did? you claim that all languages that dont treat a double negative as multiplicative to be mathematically flawed and illogical.

You seem also unable to separate the universal concept of math from the math language currently in use.

As there are ways to do math with their own rules to express the same concepts, there are different ways to speak with their own rules to express the same concept.

The context of our discussion is English, where a double negative (example, "I didn't do nothing") can be simplified into a single positive.

From a mechanical / precision perspective, a double negative in this context is a flaw and introduces needless complexity. This is bad form in terms of applying logic and reason.

Maybe from an artistic or slang perspective there is a place for it, but that is not the perspective I am looking at it in the context of this discussion.

I'm not familiar with all languages, so maybe there are some that are constructed differently. I will leave this as an unknown.

 

[nixkid]

The English which is universally taught in schools.

They teach Standard American English in England, Canada, Australia, etc?

 

[dontsnitch]

They teach Standard American English in England, Canada, Australia, etc?

Well, are we not talking about the US? Is there not a set of grammatical rules we follow?

There's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because there are some dialects which begin to evolve differently, doesn't mean there are no rules.

 

[nixkid]

Well, are we not talking about the US? Is there not a set of grammatical rules we follow?

There's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because there are some dialects which begin to evolve differently, doesn't mean there are no rules.

No, actually we are talking about the English language. America is just one country that speaks it and America's English standard is just one dialect. So Standard American English is not the "proper" way to speak English. Its one way to speak English.

 

[dontsnitch]

No, actually we are talking about the English language. America is just one country that speaks it and America's English standard is just one dialect. So Standard American English is not the "proper" way to speak English. Its one way to speak English.

So that means that there are no grammatical rules to follow?

 

[Rod1]

The context of our discussion is English, where a double negative (example, "I didn't do nothing") can be simplified into a single positive.

From a mechanical / precision perspective, a double negative in this context is a flaw and introduces needless complexity. This is bad form in terms of applying logic and reason.

Maybe from an artistic or slang perspective there is a place for it, but that is not the perspective I am looking at it in the context of this discussion.

I'm not familiar with all languages, so maybe there are some that are constructed differently. I will leave this as an unknown.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/453131?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Again language rules are not as strict as mathematical languages rules.

 

[Rod1]

So that means that there are no grammatical rules to follow?

Yes, but these are not standarized.

 

[dontsnitch]

Yes, but these are not standarized.

Is the US different than Canada? Don't they teach grammar in primary school or something?

 

[lil billy]

when there are people coming here from Mexico who learn to speak better English than many AA, there's a problem

 

[StannisTheMannis]

HILARIOUS. Thanks for the upload.

 

[IDL]

http://www.jstor.org/stable/453131?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Again language rules are not as strict as mathematical languages rules.

I don't doubt there have been variations of what has passed as acceptable, but as Zankou already noted when you start chaining assertions together to form longer lines of reasoning the added 'noise' of double negatives becomes problematic, and unwieldy.

Like an unsimplified math equation. The simplified version is clearly better at conveying the meaning it is intended to convey and if you keep plugging in unsimplified equations into larger equations the problem makes itself readily apparent.

And as I said, there very well be a place for such things from an artistic perspective, but from a purely mechanical perspective (which tends to be the perspective used when developing frameworks) it's clearly a flaw.