Why Do So Many Languages Use Double Negation?

Why do languages around the world seem to "double up" on negation? In French, you say "ne" and "pas" to negate a verb—but this isn't just a quirk of French. Double negation strategies appear across the globe: from Nordic tongues to Navajo, from Afrikaans to Arabic. So why is this pattern so common, and how do these negation structures develop in the first place?

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Introduction
00:48 - Jespersen's Cycle
02:38 - The Weakness Hypothesis
06:58 - The Emphatic Hypothesis
11:05 - Combined Approach
17:30 - Complications
19:38 - Outro

[belett]

I don't say anything but it's a missed opportunity to put the old joke about double positive :
A linguistics professor said "In English, a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

[benvanzon]

Really happy that you're also doing long-form content now!

[archspect]

Please bro; We NEED these long-form content to continue. You wouldn't even have to figure out how to fit everything within the limit of a short!!

[zetho.]

babe wake up new human1011 long form video

[m.gaiolas]

So happy to know you've decided to make long-form content. You're one of my favorite content creators, your way of explaining things is simple yet effective. I will be sharing this video with all my friends who have an interest in linguistics!

[rheiagreenland]

Would like to point out that "I don't know nothing" means "I don't know anything" more often than "I know something" and the "nothing" is an intensifier more than anything

[jordankay]

Another example of Jespersen’s Cycle still happening is in American English: stage one “I don’t care” developed the emphatic form “I couldn’t care less” which has now become “I could care less” for many speakers. As the phrase gained an idiomatic interpretation, speakers reanalyzed “less” as a negative polarity item, like “squat” is the video’s English example. There’s a direct parallel in Spanish too: “no me importa un pepino” or “me importa un pepino.”

[Louisianish]

This video is excellent! I just subscribed. I will say, though, as a speaker of both Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole who is very involved in our heritage language movements and who has read countless academic papers and books on them, I can't say I've ever heard the term "Continental Louisiana French." The example would be unmistakably linguistically classified as Louisiana Creole, btw. But you didn't say anything untrue there. I'm excited to see more of your content!

[justinhamilton]

youve made me interested in language in a way nobody else in 20 years of school could

[JoaoP.]

Interesting content! I speak Brazilian Portuguese and have noticed how our negative adverb “não” often gets weakened to a short “num” /nũ/ before verbs. That might have been a reason for the second “não” (not weakened) in some dialects, and the consequential loss of the first one.
You’re videos are very awesome for language lovers, keep it up!

[Theschizoguy]

Yesss finally, long form language content to feed my hyper fixation. Note it’s this kind of content that led me to major in linguistics

[francescobianchi]

I am from the north os Italy, I would say that usually instead of saying ‘non ho mangiato mica’ we say ‘non ho mica mangiato’, but actually we are starting to say ‘mica ho mangiato’, they are all grammatically correct, but I can observe a form of this cycle in act in my own dialect. I think that these long form videos are great, thank you.

[TorrentialSilver_]

I didn’t know about this til now. Definetly going to use it in a conlang cuz this is fire

[zonule_]

This was super gripping and easy to follow! Maybe the first non-short of yours I've watched. Thanks for what I'm sure was a LOT of work in making the video so clear and flow so well

[PSCHS_ELTHS]

In Slavic languages (at least in some) you can construct a sentence fully from negated words, but usually from just one to triple negation (but by using negated forms of the words)

[ryan]

love the long form content gurl keep going queen your eating this up

[fahimafzalfilms]

Bro as someone doing Arabic studies at uni and with a passion for linguistics I have to say I LOVED your shorts so seeing you do long form context like this is awesome. Awesome shout out for making this so accessible! The way you speak clearly with appropriate pauses and good audio makes the auto captions really accurate and they way you highlight parts of words in a consistent system whilst using a really readable font helps so much!!!!

[AbdAlHakamJunaid]

Please continue you long forms, I love these!

[davcap]

this is your best video yet, i’d love to see a part 2 going more in depth

[originami]

Very interesting video, thank you for making this! I like that you only edited it as much as needed without adding unnecessary effects or music, it's quite refreshing and my attention span grew 3 sizes this day ;)