Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 10:38:53 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: one as a pronoun? Donald Lance writes, >The people who say "I ain't got none" and mean that 'none' is exactly what >they have are merely augmenting the negation, not negating the negation. >Does any native speaker of English ever assume that someone else's "I ain't >got none" or "I can't hardly do that any more" or "He won't never come >back" is actually a negation of a negative? Depends on the context, including prior discourse and intonation/stress. Even within a negative concord dialect, "I don't want nothing" can correspond either to standard Eng. 'There's nothing I want' [= I don't want anything] or 'It's not the case that I want nothing' [= I don't want nothing], but the latter interpretation only arises if the prior discourse suggests that the speaker DOES want nothing and with the appropriate marked contour. Larry