Before nary an overnegation could be uttered
Stanford Daily columnist Alex
Coley
on
5/21/07:
But otherwise, the most entertainment I
had on Friday was watching the makings of a fight shape up outside of
Exotic Erotic, and, before nary a punch was thrown, listening to a
group of four or five security forces as they quickly mobilized into
action: "What? A fight? I'm there!" and "Right behind you Jimmy!"
Coley is reporting on two spans of time. During the first, no
punches were thrown (though, clearly, words were exchanged).
During the second, immediately following, the campus police mobilized
into action. Coley could have written
(1a) ... before a (single) punch was
thrown ... a group of four or five security forces ... quickly
mobilized into action ...
(1b) ... before any punches were thrown
... a group of four or five security forces ... quickly mobilized into
action ...
or something like
(2) ... nary a punch had been thrown
... when a group of four or five security forces ... quickly mobilized
into action ...
In (1) the negative proposition 'no punches were thrown' is conveyed
implicitly via the subordinator
before;
this is easy to see from the negative polarity elements
single in (1a) and
any in (1b). In (2) the
negative is explicit in the modifier
nary
a 'not a single'. Coley's original has both the implicit
negative
before and the
explicit negative
nary a,
producing the overnegated "before nary a punch was thrown" 'before not
a single punch was thrown'. Probably Coley threw in
nary a for its emphatic effect; the
impulse towards emphasis often leads people into overnegation.
And the rather literary
nary a
stands out so much that the reader could easily fail to appreciate the
implicit negation in
before
(after all, most occurrences of subordinating
before have no negative import); it
took me a moment, in fact, to appreciate that the original sentence was
somehow odd.
(Hat tip to Pat Callier.)
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at May 27, 2007 01:41 PM