4 ms·
This discussion reminds me of a joke: A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. I
by lt 11y ago
This discussion reminds me of a joke:
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative.
However," he pointed out, "there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
- meepmorp 11y agoI heard a version of this joke from a syntactician, but it involved a semanticist giving a conference talk on a paper he'd written. I think it's funnier that way, but that's probably the background of academic subdisciplines sniping at each other and the fear of someone pointing out that your research is just a fraud.