Reading Dana Stevens “Ferguson and Fry Rock Late Night by Having Actual Conversation“, Slate 2/24/2010, Mark Paris came across this sentence:
There was no part of their chat that wasn’t something one might not overhear at an interesting dinner party.
His reaction, in email to me, was “I know what was meant, but didn’t it go one negation too far?”
Apparently Dana Stevens though so, or perhaps some editor-like person at Slate intervened, because by the time I got to the story, the sentence read
There was no part of their chat that wasn’t something one might overhear at an interesting dinner party.
Assuming that Mark didn’t hallucinate the first version, this certainly belongs in our collection of overnegations.
This pattern is no where near as common as the favorites (like “cannot be underestimated” or “fail to miss“), but versions of it are Out There:
She most likely assumes there’s heavy risk involved with his lifestyle, and that wasn’t something she didn’t want to expose herself to.
That looks like a really fun cut to do – I just can’t believe that wasn’t something I didn’t think of…
Leia might have argued against his obvious hatred for their former leader, but she couldn’t swear that it wasn’t something she didn’t feel herself.
To watch her hoop you’d never know that it wasn’t something that didn’t just come naturally to her the first time.
I’m not saying there weren’t things that didn’t need improvement in the Rod Lurie version.
[Update — Jill Beckman reports that NBC’s coverage of the Ladies short program Tuesday night included the phrase: “There isn’t a position that she doesn’t hit that isn’t gorgeous.”
This example underlines the fact that the extra negatives can be in various places.
Thus the original example “There was no part of their chat that wasn’t something one might not overhear at an interesting dinner party” was corrected to “There was no part of their chat that wasn’t something one might overhear at an interesting dinner party” (removing the third negative), but might also, somewhat less felicitously, have been corrected to “There was no part of their chat that was something one might not overhear at an interesting dinner party” (removing the second negative).
But the NBC commentator’s observation can only be corrected to “There isn’t a position that she hits that isn’t gorgeous“, and not “There isn’t a position that she doesn’t hit that is gorgeous“.
Homework assignment: explain the difference by translating (the relevant parts) into predicate calculus.]