Not One Thing

“There’s not one thing that doesn’t point to it not being him,’
Stanko told The Associated Press.

Fate: That’s the only way to explain what led me to click on the headline for this story, but it became clear soon enough. Or, more accurately, completely unclear.

There’s not one thing
that doesn’t point to
it not being him.

Maybe breaking it down will help. Divide and conquer, that’s what we say, yes? All right, then. This is me, going in.

There’s not one thing

I could read that as “there’s not just *one* thing,” or, as I might say, “there are many things.” Or I could read it as “there’s not *even one* thing” or, as I might say, “there is nothing.” These, of course, are contradictory meanings, but let’s hold both streams open for now.

that doesn’t point to

With a little fiddling for subject/verb agreement we then get . . .

Many things
do not point to

Nothing
does not point to

The first is awkward but not too bad:  “there are many indicators that do not point to the [still-pending] conclusion.” The second still makes my brain hurt, but sometimes the only way through is to keep going.

Many things
do not point to
it not being him.

Nothing
does not point to
it not being him.

Although I hesitate to add another negative at this point, nope. Nope, nope, nope.

Many things point to it *not* being him? Sure.

Nothing points to it not being him? Meh, but OK. Let me offer this, instead: It could be him. We have no contrary evidence.

Many things *do not* point to it being him? Nothing does not point to it being him? Awkward (at the level of, “Where *did* you learn your English? Mars?”), but OK. Let me offer these: Many things point to it not being him. Nothing points to it not being him.

But “Many things do not point to it not being him”? “Nothing does not point to it not being him?” Nope.

In grade school I was taught the supposed English “rule” that two negatives make a positive. But, as this article admirably summarizes (and with no waffling):

English grammar is unlike math:
two negatives do not make a positive. . . .
Do not use two or more negatives in the same sentence or clause,
because the two negatives do not cancel each other out
but only add confusion to the text.

Yes, they do add confusion. Thank you.

Now, I know you must be curious, so let’s get to closure. Based on the rest of the article, I think Stanko meant to say this:

We haven’t identified the body yet,
but everything points to it being him.

Or, even this:

We aren’t sure yet,
but we think it’s him.

I make full allowance for the stress of being interviewed or questioned by the media, or being caught off guard in any sense. Even without those stressors, I myself have often launched on a sentence only to realize partway through that I was in trouble. Deep trouble.

All in all, it’s a good reminder that in word (just as in attitude) it’s a good idea to stay positive.

 

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14 Responses to Not One Thing

  1. Jim Taylor says:

    In “Eight-Step Editing,” I taught that readers cannot comprehend a negative, as in “Don’t think about a pink elephant.” They have to conjure a pink elephant before they can intentionally not think about it. Therefore every negative requires two mental steps. Instead of two negatives being a positive — a mistaken parallel to math — a double negative requires yet another mental “undo” step. A triple negative causes reader to turn the page and find something less confusing.

    Jim T

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Jim T – Hahaha. Yes, about the only exception I can think of for English would be hearing something like “He ain’t no good, no how!” and easily understanding the repeated negatives as emphasis. It’s easy to get into this sort of back-to-front construction (whose name I always have to look up – litotes) where a “negative” or bad thing/situation is being contraindicated as a figure of speech; to wit, “It’s not a bad thing” rather than “It’s a good thing.” (Or, as the actual definition goes, affirming something by denying its contrary.) But, boy, in writing it has to be used carefully and sparingly. I figure this is why interview transcripts read so oddly – our natural speech patterns have way more slack than writing.

    • barbara carlson says:

      This is how I feel about legalese. How can anybody keep it straight?

      • Isabel Gibson says:

        Barbara – Punctuation. I’m serious: our tax teacher in business school would read to us from the Tax Act so we could “get” how the sentences worked. It made a huge difference to hear it read aloud by someone who understood it.

        • barbara carlson says:

          I sat in the Canadian Supreme Court for over an hour and couldn’t understand what the case was actualy about. I later told a British high-court judge this, and he looked over his glasses at me and said, imperiously, “You’re not supposed to understand.”

          • Isabel Gibson says:

            Barbara – Hm. It’s hard to think of a comparable venue in another discipline — a thesis defence, maybe, in Physics? So, at some level it makes sense that even an intelligent (and verbally proficient) lay person wouldn’t understand Supreme Court proceedings, but it would be interesting to have the conversation with a non-imperious interlocutor about the value of having at least some of this in plain English.

  2. Having seen you bravely dare to go where Stanko failed to arrive, I felt I should companionably follow you. At “Meh” I still had an emergency supply of oxygen, but I made it only as far as the Mars spaceport. I believe the intrinsic negative meaning of some words allows double negatives to mean something positive. “Lt. Stanko is not going to fail to show up when called into court with his eye -witness evidence.” He’s a reliable copper even if he did learn English on Mars.

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Laurna – Aha! A litote in the wild: not going to fail to show up. I do sort of wish I could have heard his tone of voice while he constructed his impossible sentence: I expect all would then have been clear.

  3. Glad you could parse you way through it all and figure it out!

    Scary!!

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Jim R – Well, it’s certainly funny when a sentence could be understood in two opposite ways. I think SNL did a whole sketch on the double-meaning inherent in this sentence: You can’t put too much water into a nuclear reactor.

  4. Tom Watson says:

    Isabel
    Does this exercise have a name? Stanko’s Conundrum or something such as that?
    Tom

    • Isabel Gibson says:

      Tom – Well, we could give it a name if we worked on it, I bet. It seems only fair to include a negative in it, somehow: Stanko’s Non-conundrum?

  5. barbara carlson says:

    “There’s not one thing that doesn’t point to it not being him.'”
    I thought this was going to be about Trump…

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