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Help Parsing Double Negatives in sentence?

WhimsicalWillowWhimsicalWillow Live Member
edited April 2020 in General 79 karma

I spend too much time on Qs that have sentences with double negatives. What is the best way to negate them?

Example:
Two year olds do not naturally dislike salty food so much that they would not choose it over some other food.

I came across this as the correct negation:
Two year olds do naturally dislike salty food so much that they would not choose it over some other food.

Why is only the “not” from "do not" taken out instead of both "do not" and "dislike" because they are both negatives (and should cancel out)?

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Comments

  • livesofotherslivesofothers Alum Member
    edited April 2020 22 karma

    Someone else may have a more elegant explanation, but I like to substitute variables into places for simplification. I would see your example sentence this way:

    Two year olds do not naturally dislike A.
    A = salty food so much that they would not choose it over some other food.

    Yeah, I know "A" doesn't make sense. on its own. The point is more just to get the big picture idea of what the sentence is saying. The sentence is saying two-year-olds do not naturally dislike...something. (Or many things lol). For all we care, "A" could be broccoli.

    So how do you negate that?

    Two year olds do naturally dislike A.

    Or more simply, Two year olds naturally dislike A.

    So...why aren't both "do not" and "dislike" out? I think there's a technical, grammatical explanation, too, but first and foremost, the negation of dislike is not like. You can have no feelings about something.

    Does that make sense?

  • Climb_to_170Climb_to_170 Alum Member
    edited April 2020 426 karma

    .

  • WhimsicalWillowWhimsicalWillow Live Member
    79 karma

    @livesofothers said:
    Someone else may have a more elegant explanation, but I like to substitute variables into places for simplification. I would see your example sentence this way:

    Two year olds do not naturally dislike A.
    A = salty food so much that they would not choose it over some other food.

    Yeah, I know "A" doesn't make sense. on its own. The point is more just to get the big picture idea of what the sentence is saying. The sentence is saying two-year-olds do not naturally dislike...something. (Or many things lol). For all we care, "A" could be broccoli.

    So how do you negate that?

    Two year olds do naturally dislike A.

    Or more simply, Two year olds naturally dislike A.

    So...why aren't both "do not" and "dislike" out? I think there's a technical, grammatical explanation, too, but first and foremost, the negation of dislike is not like. You can have no feelings about something.

    Does that make sense?

    Kind of... How do we know we can just throw the "not" from the "do not" out?

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