Double Negatives and the Rubes, Noobs and Boobs Who Use Them

In English, double negatives are a chief identifying mark of the bumpkin. Add ain’t, a drawl and some gerunds with letter Gs dropped off and you’ve got a vicious American stereotype, the uneducated rural simpleton. Whether portrayed to be lovable like Jethro Bodine or disquieting like Honey Boo Boo,  the iconic American rube is a stalwart of our folklore, and in most cases, they ain't heard nothin', they ain't seen nothin', and they don't know nothin'.

Another notable demographic that uses double negatives are non-native speakers. The reason for that is because most languages employ a grammatical system whereby the second negative intensifies or affirms the first. This is called negative concord. The sentence, “I never did nothing,” could come out of either our rural stereotype’s mouth or a recent immigrant’s. The French, “Je ne faisais rien,” for instance, translates literally as “I didn’t do nothing.”

As with all things in language, there are two sides to the double negative coin, and its second is its entirely grammatical use as a weakened positive. It is the stingy compliment, the eked out affirmation, the grudging endorsement. The comedian wasn’t unfunny, his wife was not unattractive, and on these two points each might not disagree.

All the Pretty Pronouns, Well, Half of Them I Guess...

We explored first person pronouns first because we live in a narcissistic, self-referential, autocentric society, essentially the “me” generation boiled over onto the rest of the stove. Now having coddled the ego a bit, we can look at some of the other pronouns.

The first person pronoun belongs to the personal pronoun family, which comprises three pronouns for each of the first, second and third person usages, depending on whether it is functioning as the subject or the object, and whether it is singular or plural: I, me and we, and he, him and them, or she, her and them, depending on usage. You is always you, whether it is subject or object, singular or plural, and that’s what I love about you. Constancy, reliability, unshakeable resolve. Why can't the other pronouns be like you? There will never be another you.

Possessive pronouns are a good tangent, especially if we start with mine. That way we can stick with the self-obsession theme and urge all Americans to participate in that most patriotic of activities, accumulating possessions. His, hers, ours, theirs, even its. Once the nation’s economic engines are stoked, we’ll need those possessive pronouns to figure out whose stuff is whose.

We also dealt with restrictive clauses when selecting which over that a few weeks ago. What we failed to do at the time was name the function of the word which, which is usually a relative pronoun. Relative pronouns introduce a restrictive or subordinate clause, e.g., “I brought a box of Jell-O Pudding Pops to the Oprah taping, which was promptly confiscated.”

There are more pronouns including demonstrative ones, intensive ones, reflexive ones and indefinite ones. Hm. Indefinite. Now that sounds like my kind of pronoun. Lots of wiggle room.

The Grateful Dead and Dangling Participles, Written While the Dose Was Coming On

In honor of the Grateful Dead’s 50^th Anniversary Fare Thee Well tour, let’s consider the sentence, “Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.” The participle clause here is, “Driving that train (gerundial phrase),” which is followed by yet another participle clause, “high on cocaine (adjectival phrase).” The adjunct clause that both participle clauses modify is “Casey Jones," behaving here as the subject, with "is ready” acting as the object. Boom. The sentence is set up and resolved and everyone is happy, except perhaps a few nervous passengers who may have seen old Casey clacking out a couple of lifters in the rail station bathroom. “Watch your speed” is pure gravy in terms of sentence structure, and when you think about it, just damn good advice.

If you were to remove the adjunct clause, you would be left with, “Driving that train, high on cocaine, watch your speed,” resulting in a dangling participle and an incomplete sentence. In a word, buzzkill. “Driving that train” is all set up to modify something, and when we are deprived of it, it is unsatisfying.   

The next time the lyric comes around, Jerry sings, “Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better watch your speed,” which is a dangling participle of sorts in that this third person advice for Mr. Jones to watch his speed doesn't relate directly to the setup of the participle clause of being zipped out of his bean on some serious Peruvian blaster flake while he operates a cross-country passenger train, but the lyric has moreover by this point become a purposeful misdirection of the expected sentence and has grown into a collection of metaphors depicting train schedules and the combined thrill and danger of being an engineer, along with general images of life and love on the road, a thing musicians can relate to, and a thing which also seems to have led to the entire sense of this article being dismantled by the example I selected to illustrate it, which when you address anything abstract using The Grateful Dead as your springboard for argument, this kind of thing is to be expected as there is no end to the mischief you can be courting once you start to go down that rabbit hole, not the least of which manifestations is the inadvisable length of the last sentence of this piece, the one going on right now, which is taking up an entire paragraph.

Gerunds and Participles Go to the Movies

There was a craze a few years back when it seemed every movie title’s first word began with -ing.  

Saving Private Ryan, Raging Bull, Leaving Las Vegas, Raising Arizona, Being John Makovich, Blazing Saddles and so forth. The grammatical function of these words is sometimes gerundial, while sometimes they serve as present participles.

It can be confusing, as all gerunds and present participles are born of verbs and all of them end in –ing. Wait, what? An English grammar rule that has no exceptions? In the case of gerunds and present participles, it even holds true with the most incorrigible of all verbs, to be and to go, whose gerund and present participle forms are being and going.

If they are always the same, then why have different names for them? The real reason is because of a leftover distinction from the Latin, whose case system of grammar did require two different words depending on their function, and there is a school of thought that this distinction should be sacked in favor of the term gerund-participle. For me though, the mere fact of gerunds functioning nominally (as nouns do) and present participles functioning adjectivally (as adjectives do) is distinction enough for me to appreciate having some distinguishing terminology for them.

So which of these movie titles are gerunds (functioning as a noun), and which are present participles (functioning as an adjective)? Ask yourself, “Is this an activity or a description?” Hint: there are five of each. Click your answer to see if you are right.

Saving Private Ryan                                        Gerund Participle

Raging Bull                                                     Gerund Participle

Leaving Las Vegas                                          Gerund Participle

Burning Mississippi                                        Gerund Participle

Blazing Saddles                                              Gerund Participle

Being John Makovich                                     Gerund Participle

Vanishing Point                                               Gerund Participle

Boxing Helena                                                Gerund Participle

Breaking Dawn                                               Gerund Participle
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon                   Gerund Participle

See you at the movies!

Misplaced Modifiers and the Power of Only

There have traditionally been some strict rules regarding the use of the word only, the foremost of which is that it is placed directly before the word or phrase it is modifying. You’re probably familiar with the term, misplaced modifier. 

If one were to write, “I only eat meat,” a reader must infer that the author doesn’t purchase or cook meat, and that he or she is presumably not a cattle rancher. In order to express exclusive carnivorousness, a disdain of poultry, fish, dairy and vegetables, it is preferred one writes, “I eat only meat.” In the latter case, our example won’t be around to vex us much longer, as those arteries are about as clogged as a Los Angeles rush hour freeway.

Very few words in the English language have the power of absolute selection. Only does. Only walks into a sentence, throws its arm over the word it is modifying and bestows upon it a declaration of uniqueness. When it states, “You’re the only girl for me,” the swooning can be heard throughout the dictionary. 

Only can also be the cudgel of the cruel. “Oh, it’s only you.” From the aardvark to the zyzzyva, every creature in the lexicon hears the disappointment and aches for the poor word being modified so dismissively, so disdainfully. For good or ill, it’s hard to imagine a word with more power than only, be it for its implied meanness or its exaltation.

This makes only a contranym of sorts. It means unequaled, matchless, one-of-a-kind, and yet it can also mean merely, simply or just. It can be said with a puffed chest and broad, sweeping gesture of the hand, or with tented eyebrows and a shrug, perhaps a dispirited and blushing look at one’s shoes. “I only had time to edit half of Mike’s book,” the hapless scrivener said sheepishly as he handed over the manuscript. Only is the last refuge of the slacker, the under-deliverer, the non-producer.

Donald Trump being in the crosshairs these days, let’s put some words in his mouth and move the modifier only around a little bit, starting with the sentence, “I only insult Mexicans.” What that means under traditional rules is that Mr. Trump does not speak to Mexicans directly, he does not walk down the street with Mexicans, he doesn’t hire them, fire them or admire them. He insults them and that is the extent of his engagement with them. 

Were Mr. Trump to say, “I insult only Mexicans,” we would infer something different. This means that of all the available ethnicities, religious proclivities, nationalities and other categories of humanity, the only ones he is aiming at, at least these days, are Mexicans.

The word only is a modifier, and what a modifier it is. It modifies like a boss. It modifies with an absolutism most words can only dream of. We have been so woefully short of modifiers that connote individuated exclusivity we had to borrow nonpareil from the French. Nobody does it better than only. And it’s practically made for songs. It rhymes with lonely for Pete’s sake. Springsteen, The Ink Spots and most perfectly, Roy Orbison all went to that well in their songwriting. Embrace the power of only, but be careful where you put it.

Inflammable versus Flammable: Inflammable Got Burned

There is a small family of words with negating suffixes that mean the same thing as the related word. They seem like they should be opposites, but they are synonymous. (De)bone, (in)valuable and (de)press come to mind, but the king of all of these is flammable, whose counterpart, inflammable, means exactly the same thing. The story behind the two words is fascinating.

In saying they are related, first understand they are related as cousins rather than brothers. Both flammable and inflammable derive from Latin words relating to burning, but the precise words each derive from are different. Inflammable was by far the more popular of the two English derivations through the 19th and into the early 20th century.

The industrial revolution was in full swing and early 20th century user documentation and marketing materials sometimes presented the term inflammable incorrectly in describing a product’s potential combustibility, and anecdotal evidence of some consistent misreading of inflammable having inspired user carelessness was in the ether. 

Insurance companies and safety experts took notice and launched a campaign urging authors, attorneys, physicians, newspaper writers and others to begin using flammable instead to avoid potentially confusing people with something that could cause injury and property damage. The following notice was commonly found in technical journals in the early 1920s:

 

"The National Safety Council, The National Fire Protection Association, and similar organizations have set out to discourage the use of the word inflammable and to encourage the use of the word flammable instead. The reason for this change is that the meaning of inflammable has so often been misinterpreted."

Flammable indeed is the dominant usage now, though when the directive first began to be adopted, the academics howled at the injustice, perfectly happy to let the hoi polloi burn in their own ignorance. Both remain permissible by modern editorial standards.

So what does the future hold for inflammable? As language in general tilts more and more toward the utilitarian and away from the bejeweled, I suspect that flammable has won the battle once and for all by virtue of conserving a syllable and two characters in a tweet, and that inflammable’s flame will flicker and fade further and though not die out entirely, before long become solely the province of sophists and hidebound doctrinaires. It sounds pretentious to my ear and I recommend against it in favor of flammable.

Avoid Being Involuntarily Committed by Mastering Bad v. Badly

Today’s nugget is bad versus badly, an easy one to cognize, perhaps even more so if you enjoy this odd way of looking at it.

We shall examine the question through the declarative sentence, “I feel bad.” Some may be tempted to say, “I feel badly.” Don’t do it. When you say, “I feel badly,” the conclusion I reach is that you have just returned from the woods where you buried four members of a traveling circus in a shallow grave.

You may ask, “Well that’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” I don’t think so. When you say you feel badly, badly is an adverb that is modifying the verb to feel. You are saying, “I am bad at feeling.”

You don’t feel things. You are incapable of empathy. You are a sociopath. You display antipathy to the pain of others. You went to the circus when it came to town. You killed a mime, two clowns and the magician’s lovely assistant. And now here you are, admitting your depraved indifference to humanity. You feel badly.

The adjective works here, not the adverb. If you feel bad, you may badly need a drink. Here, badly is modifying need, adding adverbial intensification to the act of needing. The main thing to remember is that adverbs do not function independently, so if you see one hanging out by itself, the adjectival form is probably called for.

Painting by Andrew Salgado