Double negatives: negative concord across languages
Languages with negative concord allow multiple negatives to express a single negation. That gives a sentence with several negative forms a different interpretation from one in which the negatives cancel each other. A double negative contains two forms of grammatical negation in the same sentence; multiple negation is the broader term for more than one negative in a clause. Portuguese, French, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Italian, and Afrikaans are among the languages that use concord, along with many vernacular varieties of modern English. Modern Standard English follows a different pattern, as do Latin, Japanese, Swedish, and several other languages.
In languages without negative concord, additional words can carry negative polarity without being negatives themselves. English examples include "ever," "anything," and "anyone" in "I haven't ever owed anything to anyone." A corresponding sentence in a concord variety of English can use "never," "nothing," and "no one" instead. These choices belong to different grammatical patterns, even when the intended denial is the same. Negative polarity also appears after words other than direct negatives. "Doubt" and "hardly" can license the same kinds of words, as in "I doubt he has ever owed anything to anyone."
Standard English also uses two negatives to express a qualified positive. "I'm not feeling unwell" can convey an understatement of "I'm feeling well," a rhetorical form called litotes. "I don't disagree" leaves room for several degrees of agreement or even an absence of opinion, so further statements can clarify the intended meaning. Other English combinations, including "not nothing," can mean either something or nothing across different varieties and registers. Context, location, register, and the ideas being expressed help resolve that ambiguity, while speech can add information through intonation.
English use of negative concord has a history reaching beyond modern regional speech. In Middle English, Chaucer used double, triple, and quadruple negatives in The Canterbury Tales. His portrayal of the Friar includes a combination corresponding to "There never was no man nowhere so virtuous." Shakespeare also used negatives together for emphasis in Richard III, with the line "I never was, nor never will be." Such constructions continue in Appalachian English and African American Vernacular English. Researchers studying the latter have traced its origins to colonial English, where multiple negatives were present and acceptable.
The shift in Standard English also appears in grammatical guidance. In 1711, James Greenwood stated that two negatives in English affirm. Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar, published in 1762, likewise treated two negatives as equivalent to an affirmative. Grammarians have suggested that Latin, which lacks negative concord, served as a model for prescriptions against it. Yet concord had already fallen into disuse in Standard English by the time of Lowth's grammar, and there is no evidence that prescriptivism drove its loss. The timing distinguishes the grammatical change from later statements of a rule, rather than making a textbook the automatic cause of the change.
Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian commonly use doubled negative correlatives. Spanish "No veo nada," Portuguese "Não vejo nada," Romanian "Nu văd nimic," and Italian "Non vedo niente" literally combine forms corresponding to "I do not see nothing." Their intended meaning is "I do not see anything." Italian can also combine negatives in a way that produces a positive with a difference in emphasis. "Non voglio non mangiare" literally means "I don't want not to eat" and more precisely conveys a preference to eat.
French commonly expresses a simple negation through two elements, such as ne with pas, plus, or jamais. Pas derives from the Latin passus, meaning step; a phrase corresponding to "I will not walk a single step" helped establish its emphatic use. That usage spread until it became a necessary element of modern French negation, and ne is generally dropped in speech, as in "Je sais pas." Other negative words can combine as well. "Je n'ai rien dit à personne" means "I didn't say anything to anyone," while a longer combination can express never saying anything to anyone anymore.
Welsh offers a different arrangement of negative concord. In spoken Welsh, ddim often accompanies a verb form already negative in meaning. "Dydy hi ddim yma" corresponds word for word to "Not-is she not here," while expressing "She is not here." Literary Welsh can use an initial negative particle that causes a mutation in the verb. In speech, that particle is often omitted but the mutation remains.