#negation — Public Fediverse posts

The contraction "eem" (earlier "e'en") began as an intensifier for "isn't" or "doesn't". Lately in Black English, "eem" has itself become a negation, meaning "isn't/doesn't even".
Language Jones episode about an unusual live observation of a Jespersen cycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CWUZmZd2-k

#linguistics #BlackEnglish #AAVE #negation #JespersenCycle

"Une représentation ou une pensée peut percer jusqu'à la conscience à condition qu'elle se laisse nier. La négation est une manière de prendre connaissance du refoulé, à vrai dire déjà une annulation [Aufhebung] du refoulement, mais évidemment pas une acceptation du refoulé. On voit comment la fonction intellectuelle se sépare ici du processus affectif. À l'aide de la négation une seule des conséquences du processus de refoulement est annulée ; celle que son contenu de représentation n'atteint pas la conscience. Il en résulte une sorte d'acceptation intellectuelle du refoulé avec maintien de l'essentiel quant au refoulement. […] Nier quelque chose dans le jugement signifie en fait : c'est quelque chose que je préférerais plutôt refouler."

L'inconscient ne dit jamais non. "Nier quelque chose dans le jugement signifie en fait : c'est quelque chose que je préférerais plutôt refouler."

"Juger est l'action intellectuelle qui décide de l'action motrice, qui met fin à l'ajournement par la pensée".

#Freud (1925) : https://www.psychanalyse.lu/articles/FreudVerneinung.htm

"La double négation" : https://shs.cairn.info/revue-la-psychiatrie-de-l-enfant-2020-2-page-3?lang=fr via @danahilliot

#juger #refoulé #refouler #refoulement #psy #psychologie #psychanalyse #juger #subjuguer #juges #nier #négation

On misnegation and overnegation and how they can trip up writers:
https://blog.oup.com/2026/03/implicit-negation-is-easy-to-miss/

Battistella's piece cites this post of mine on misnegation and why it shouldn't be overestimated, I mean underestimated: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/11/19/misnegation-should-not-be-overestimated-i-mean-underestimated/

#language #semantics #writing #WritingCommunity #negation #linguistics

#Development #Examples
Using the new CSS @function rule · Some examples where this comes in handy https://ilo.im/166496

_____
#ModernCSS #Layout #Typography #Borders #Negation #Chrome #Browser #WebDev #Frontend #CSS

Here's another short excerpt from an Intro to Philosophy class session I had, delving into Hegel's Self-Consciousness section, working our way into the Master-Slave dialectic!
https://youtube.com/shorts/nSC2ElinE2A
#Video #Short #Master #Slave #SelfConsciousness #Desire #Negation #SelfCertainty

@josd I'm blushing 😊 Thank you for that strong compliment about log:complement as negation in RDF/N3 !

#rdf #n3 #negation #logic #linkeddata

#Krishnamurti #Negation 2 @krishnamurti

https://jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/eight-conversations/1968-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-eight-conversations-2nd-conversation

#Krishnamurti #Negation 1 @krishnamurti

https://jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/eight-conversations/1968-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-eight-conversations-2nd-conversation

@nihilist @krishnamurti

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The state of #negation

https://jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/eight-conversations/1968-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-eight-conversations-2nd-conversation

#Questioner: You say the teaching of true religion! This immediately creates the camp of the professionals and specialists versus the rest of the world. Do you mean, then, that religion is separate from life?

#Krishnamurti: Religion is not separate from life; on the contrary it is life itself. It is this division between religion and life which has bred all the misery you are talking about. So we come back to the basic question of whether it is possible in daily life to live in a state which, for the moment, let us call enlightenment?

#Questioner: I still don't know what you mean by enlightenment?

#Krishnamurti: A state of negation. Negation is the most positive action, not positive assertion. This is a very important thing to understand. Most of us so easily accept positive dogma, a positive creed, because we want to be secure, to belong, to be attached, to depend. The positive attitude divides and brings about duality. The conflict then begins between this attitude and others. But the negation of all values, of all morality, of all beliefs, having no frontiers, cannot be in opposition to anything. A positive statement in its very definition separates, and separation is resistance. To this we are accustomed, this is our conditioning. To deny all this is not immoral; on the contrary to deny all division and resistance is the highest morality. To negate everything that man has invented, to negate all his values, ethics and gods, is to be in a state of mind in which there is no duality, therefore no resistance or conflict between opposites. In this state there are no opposites, and this state is not the opposite of something else.

#Questioner: Then how do you know what is good and what is bad? Or is there no good and bad? What is to prevent me from crime or even murder? If I have no standards what is to prevent me from God knows what aberrations?

#Krishnamurti: To deny all this is to deny oneself, and oneself is the conditioned entity who continually pursues a conditioned good. To most of us negation appears as a vacuum because we know activity only in the prison of our conditioning, fear and misery. From that we look at negation and imagine it to be some terrible state of oblivion or emptiness. To the man who has negated all the assertions of society, religion, culture and morality, the man who is still in the prison of social conformity is a man of sorrow. Negation is the state of enlightenment which functions in all the activities of a man who is free of the past. It is the past, with its tradition and its authority, that has to be negated. Negation is freedom, and it is the free man who lives, loves, and knows what it means to die.

@nihilist

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MINIMUM-NIHILISM

for me is:

the daily and intellectually #NEGATION of all the state- and society-shit that surrounds me — yes, its nearly a religious act

#worte die man #auslandischen deutsch- #Translationsstudenten beibringen kann 🤣 🤣 🤣

#pläsier

#demagogie

#defäzieren

#sakrosankt

#chuzpe

#wonne

#grazien

#persiflage

#bonvivant

#lebemann

#popanz

#nepotismus

#negation

#mumen

#plusquamimperfekt

etc. pp…

🤣 🤣 🤣

OK das letzte Wort gibt es nicht.

Ein schönes Beispiel für ambigen Negationsskopus. Aus dem Kontext wird wohl klar, dass die Treppe weder geräumt noch gestreut wird (Treppe wird nicht (geräumt und gestreut)).

Verstehen kann man aber auch: Die Treppe wird nicht geräumt, aber sie wird gestreut (Treppe wird nicht (geräumt) und gestreut). #skopus #negation #lingustik #ambiguity #linguistics

Logic Syllabus • 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/logic-syllabus/

Logical Operators
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Logic_Syllabus#Logical_operators

Logical Negation • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_negation
Logical NAND • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_NAND
Logical NNOR • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_NNOR
Logical Conjunction • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction
Logical Disjunction • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_disjunction
Exclusive Disjunction • https://oeis.org/wiki/Exclusive_disjunction
Logical Implication • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_implication
Logical Equality • https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_equality

#Logic #LogicSyllabus #LogicalOperator #LogicalConnective
#Negation #NAND #NNOR #LogicalConjunction #LogicalDisjunction
#ExclusiveDisjunction #XOR #LogicalImplication #LogicalEquality

Nice to get a shoutout on the latest Touch newsletter covering their 40th year: https://www.touch33.net/mails/2212.html

The album mentioned was the 2nd instalment of my Blackout series in which I permanently remove sounds from my 20 year old performance system with each performance/release (eventually resulting in a ‘blackout’).

You can hear both albums on Touch’s website: https://ashinternational.bandcamp.com/album/blackout-2-asarco-towers

@touch #musodon #touch40 #negation
#electronicmusic #experimentalmusic

Ahem, decided to change servers. Time for proper #introductions: I'm a post-doctoral researcher working at the intersection of English and general #linguistics. Some of my interests are #negation, #corpuslinguistics and #typology. I'm Finnish, and my toots will probably be a mixture of English and Finnish, with some other languages thrown in. I also co-edit the Finnish Journal of Linguistics, an open-access journal of general linguistics that is now looking for submissions for its 2023 volume.

Der #Andere als #allmächtiger, #unsichtbarer #Akteur, der den #Paranoiden #verfolgt;

Die #Implizite #Negation ist eine #Ursache für #Paranoia insofern, als dass die #Illusion der #Freiwilligkeit von #Verzicht iSv. #Selbstbestimmtheit als #kontingent #beobachtbar wird. Die #Kontingenz der #vormals als #eindeutig #angenommenen #Realität wird zur #Ursache für #Angst.

#freiwillig

Slavoj #Zizek - #Pandemie I, #Chronik einer #verlorenen #Zeit, S.101 ff.

#Begriff #negativer #Kontingenz

#Kontingenz wird durch #Negation von #Unmöglichkeit und #Notwendigkeit #definiert.

#negative #Kontingenz in #Bezug zu #Folgenorientierung meint deren #Notwendigkeit vor dem #Hintergrund ihrer #Unmöglichkeit.
Es wird #gemacht, #obwohl es nicht geht.

#Arbeiten / #Herstellen / #Handeln
#Möglichkeit #Bedingungen

vgl. #intertemporale #Freiheitssicherung

Niklas #Luhmann, Die #soziologische #Beobachtung des #Rechts, S. 30

Die #Unterscheidung zwischen #empirisch und #transzendental als eine #Perspektive, die die auf #Ebene von #Was-#Frage​n #selbstverständlich​e #Negation eines #transzendental​en #Vermeidungsirrtum​s als #schizoid #symptom​atisiert.

#Befreiend​es #Erlebnis der #schrankenlos​en #Beziehungsmöglichkeit zwischen #Mensch und #Umwelt.

#AbyWarburg #Perspektivität #Identität

Aby #Warburg - #Schlangenritual, ein #Reisebericht, S.12 f.

Amn’t I glad we use “amn’t” in Ireland

From ‘An Irish Childhood in England: 1951’ by Eavan Boland (full poem on my Tumblr):

let the world I knew become the space
between the words that I had by heart
and all the other speech that always was
becoming the language of the country that
I came to in nineteen fifty-one:
barely-gelled, a freckled six-year-old,
overdressed and sick on the plane,
when all of England to an Irish child
was nothing more than what you’d lost and how:
was the teacher in the London convent who,
when I produced “I amn’t” in the classroom
turned and said—“You’re not in Ireland now.”

I grew up in Ireland using expressions and grammatical constructions that I took to be normal English, only to discover years later that what counts as normal in language usage can be highly dependent on geography and dialect. I amn’t sure when I realised it, but amn’t is an example of this.

Standardized English has an array of forms of the verb be for various persons and tenses with a negative particle (n’t) affixed: isn’t, wasn’t, aren’t, weren’t. But there’s a curious gap. In the tag question I’m next, ___ I?, the usual form is the unsystematic am I not or the irregular aren’t I (irregular because we don’t say *I are). Why not amn’t?

Amn’t I talking to you? (Anne Emery, Death at Christy Burke’s, 2011)

Amn’t I after telling you that, said Donal. (Sean O’Casey, Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well, 1949)

Amn’t /’æmənt/, though centuries old, is not part of standardized English. But it is common in Ireland, used especially in colloquial speech though not limited to informal registers. It’s also used in Scotland (alongside amnae and other variants) and parts of England – the OED says the north, and west midlands – and occasionally elsewhere, such as Wales.

How amn’t came to be so geographically limited is not fully clear. Another variant, an’t, probably supplanted it in general usage because speakers wanted to avoid sounding /n/ immediately after /m/; see Michael Quinion and Robert Beard for brief commentary on this. David Crystal says it was therefore:

a natural development to simplify the consonant cluster. The final /t/ made it more likely that the simplification would go to /ant/ rather than /amt/, and this is what we find in 18th century texts, where it appears as an’t.

An’t, also spelt a’n’t, is the “phonetically natural and the philologically logical shortening”, writes Eric Partridge in Usage and Abusage. It too fell from favour, but not before morphing in two significant ways. It gave rise to ain’t, which has its own lively history, and it also began being spelt aren’t (by “orthographic analogy”, in Crystal’s phrase), which is pronounced the same as an’t in non-rhotic accents.

This explains aren’t I, which would otherwise seem a grammatical anomaly. Indeed, Gabe Doyle notes that its irregularity “earns the ire of the accountants” of English. But it has steadily gained acceptability in major English-speaking regions. Irish and Scottish dialects are the exception in retaining and favouring its ancestor, amn’t I.

[image source]

Despite its vintage, its logic, and its convenience, not everyone likes amn’t. It’s dismissed as “ugly” by Eric Partridge and as “substandard” by Bryan Garner in his Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman describe amn’t I as “clunky” in Origins of the Specious.

Garner is wrong, and the other pronouncements are subjective or prejudicial. Amn’t is not part of standardized English, but it is thoroughly normal in Irish English. There’s nothing intrinsically unsound or deficient about it unless you revere prestige. It’s often called awkward, but it doesn’t feel awkward if you grow up with it. Even aesthetically, amn’t has unique appeal.

Amn’t I with you? Amn’t I your girl? (James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922)

Ye don’t want me, don’t ye? And amn’t I as good as the best of them? Amn’t I? (Patrick MacGill, The Rat-pit, 1915)

So how is amn’t used? Commonly in questions: straightforward interrogative (Joyce, above), tag (MacGill), and rhetorical (see post title). These are the structures typically noted by lexicographers: Robert Burchfield’s revision of Fowler says it’s “used as part of the tag question amn’t I?”, while Terence Dolan’s Dictionary of Hiberno-English associates it with “negative first-person questions”.

Neither Burchfield nor Dolan mentions other uses, but amn’t is also used, for example, in declarative statements of the form I amn’t. Though even Irish people, in my experience, usually say I’m not in such cases, some of them also say I amn’t.

I amn’t sure I should go on at all or if you’d like a line or two from your bad old penny. (Joseph O’Connor, Ghost Light, 2010)

And you, my poor changling, have to go to Birmingham next week, and I, poor divil, amn’t well enough to go out to far-away places for even solitary walks. (J.M. Synge, Letters to Molly, 1971)

A bit odder is the double negative question amn’t I not, which I’ve come across in both tags (I’m not drunk neither, amn’t I not) and more centrally (amn’t I not turble [terrible] altogether). A straw poll I held on Twitter suggests, unsurprisingly, that it’s a good deal rarer than other uses of amn’t, but several people still confirm using it.

My Twitter query also showed that amn’t occurs in more than just tag questions in Scotland, disproving a claim I’d encountered earlier. It prompted lots of anecdata and discussion on the word’s contemporary use in Ireland and elsewhere, and is available on Wakelet for interested readers.

If I amn’t mistaken, the pinch is here. (Athenian Gazette, May 1691)

Oh, Peader, but amn’t I Dublin born and bred? (Katie Flynn, Strawberry Fields, 1994)

Amn’t may grow in frequency and stature or it might, like ain’t, remain quite stigmatised in formal English. At the moment it’s undoubtedly a minority usage, with just four hits in the vast COHA corpus, five in COCA, and one in the BNC. Even GloWbE, with its 1.9 billion words from informal sources, offers a mere 31 hits.

Last year I retweeted a comment from @Ann_imal, a US speaker who said she had “started saying ‘amn’t I’ instead of ‘aren’t I,’ and no one (except AutoCorrect) has questioned me”. A search on Twitter suggests she’s not alone: amn’t has modest but undeniable currency in Englishes and idiolects around the world.

Social attitudes are decisive. Language Hat has noted that children acquiring language sometimes use amn’t – it is, after all, an intuitive construction – only to lose it along the way; a search on Google Books returns similar reports. LH used the word himself, and says, “I don’t remember when or why I stopped. The pressures of ‘proper English’ are insidious.”

In a neat inversion of the usual pattern, a commenter at Language Log recalls using aren’t I as a child and being corrected to amn’t I. More of this kind of parental guidance, or at least less proscriptive regulation in the other direction, may help amn’t gain more of a foothold outside Ireland and Scotland.

Not that I’ve anything against aren’t I, or ain’t for that matter. But if anyone felt they wanted to adopt amn’t and got past the social barrier, they would likely find it a handy, pleasing contraction. And that counts for a lot these days, amirite amn’t I right?

https://twitter.com/StanCarey/status/822016562953682945

*

Today, by the way, is (US) National Grammar Day, which by semantic sorcery I’m interpreting as International Grammar Day to highlight a characteristic feature of grammar in Ireland. The Sentence first archives have lots more Irish English grammar and vocabulary.

Updates:

Eavan Boland has also written about this episode in prose, in her book Object Lessons (1995):

“Language is fossil poetry,” says Emerson, and it may well be. But it also home truth. Whatever the inventions and distortions of my imaginings, my tongue, the sounds it made in my mouth, betrayed me. I was no English Alice. I was an Irish child in England. […]

The inevitable happened. One day my tongue betrayed me out of dream and counterfeit into cold truth. I was in the cloakroom in school in the middle of the afternoon. A winter darkness was already gathering through one of the stubborn fogs of the time. A teacher was marshaling children here and there, dividing those who were taking buses from those who were being collected. “I amn’t taking the bus,” I said. I was six or seven then, still within earshot of another way of speaking. But the English do not use that particular construction. It is an older usage. If they contract the verb and the negative, they say, “I’m not.”

Without knowing, I had used that thing for which the English reserve a visceral dislike: their language, loaded and aimed by the old enemy. The teacher whirled around. She corrected my grammar; her face set, her tone cold. “You’re not in Ireland now” was what she said.

At her blog The Other Side of Sixty, Corkonian wisewebwoman says: “you wouldn’t believe the shellacking I took for brazenly using ‘amn’t’ when I moved to Canada. Laughter, disbelief and mockery ensued.”

I like a good coincidence. While editing this post I listened to the Mogwai song ‘Wizard Motor‘ on repeat, unaware, before a tweet from Helen McClory, that Mogwai also have a song called ‘Moses? I Amn’t’:

#amnt #contractions #dialects #eavanBoland #grammar #hibernoEnglish #ireland #irishBooks #irishEnglish #irishEnglishGrammar #irishLiterature #lexicography #linguistics #morphology #nationalGrammarDay #negation #poetry #prescriptivism #sociolinguistics #standardizedEnglish #usage #words #writing