July 14, 2007

Undernegation of the day

Once you start looking for them, malnegations are everywhere. Margaret Marks of Transblawg sent in this specimen, from Ian Jones, "Rise and fall of a comic genius", The Guardian, 7/12/2007:

Plots swung sickeningly from one cliche to another. Jokes arrived out of the blue for no reason. No attempt was made to cling to reality. Now Homer would end up in new employment six or seven times a series. To date, he's held 118 (and counting) jobs, from missionary to garbage commissioner to grease salesman to fortune cookie writer, which wouldn't be such a damning statistic had almost none of them been particularly funny.

The context makes it clear that Mr. Jones meant something like "...had it not been the case that almost none of them were particularly funny", which he might have tried to render as "... hadn't almost none of them been particularly funny", or perhaps "... had not almost none of them been particularly funny", had not almost neither of those been particularly grammatical.

Then again, maybe he did write "... which wouldn't be such a damning statistic had not almost none of them been particularly funny", and some bewildered copy editor red-penciled one of the words more or less at random.

Posted by Mark Liberman at July 14, 2007 02:59 PM