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neither/nor and double negation

This is a correct sentence:

As soon as this kind of regulation is imposed, lawyers would no longer be able to pretend that they don't know where a piece of paper is, nor could they have no idea of what they're looking for.

My question is, how does it not contradict the rules of double negation, in particular the phrase "no idea" in combination with "neither/nor"?

Re: neither/nor and double negation

I think you'll find that the original sentence was slightly different, including the final clause, which I think was the part you were concerned about:


"By imposing this kind of regulation, lawyers would no longer be able to pretend that they don't know where a piece of paper is, nor could they claim that they have no idea what they're looking for".

Do you still have an issue with it?



PaulM

Re: neither/nor and double negation

I was thinking along the same lines, I thought a bit of paraphrase might help, since in the new sentence a new clause appears thus not contradicting the rules of double negation/double negation should not appear within a single clause that is/, but I'm not a native speaker and yes, it still bothers me a little bit; what I have understood so far is, the phrase "no idea" is like a concise/reduced clause, that's why in order to make the meaning explicit, we have to paraphrase. I hope this interpretation of your explanation is correct and I would like to say I'm grateful for your most helpful answer.

Re: neither/nor and double negation

"As soon as this kind of regulation is imposed, lawyers would no longer be able to pretend that they don't know where a piece of paper is, nor could they have no idea of what they're looking for".

That sentence makes no sense: the correct version is below:

"By imposing this kind of regulation, lawyers would no longer be able to pretend that they don't know where a piece of paper is, nor could they claim that they have no idea what they're looking for".

There's certainly no 'double negative' here. The connective adjunct "nor" has scope over the verb phrase "could they claim" (means the same as "and they could not claim"), but not over the embedded subordinate that clause. This is evident from the fact that the polarity of the noun phrase "no idea ..." could be reversed to "some idea ..." without loss of grammaticality:

"... nor could they claim [that they have no idea what they're looking for"].

"... nor could they claim [that they have some idea what they're looking for"].

In other words the combination of "nor" and "no idea" does not make a double negative; they are not linked in that way.



PaulM

Re: neither/nor and double negation

The sentence I quoted is from a book of tests for the admission exam in English at Sofia University. The sentence you quoted is from the original article, thank you once again, I read it with great pleasure and found some more mistakes in the version from the book of tests. Apparently some "important" university figure decided they could paraphrase and edit the way they pleased, and that they had enough "capacity" for that. Owing to you, this has been exposed. It's huge comfort to realize somebody else's poor phrasing and syntax have been the reason for my racking my brains for quite some time... At least now I know where to turn to with a similar question.