alt Hacker NewsThe language pattern the author refers to is called litotes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes), but to say that English doesn’t use them is… not quite right.
The language pattern the author refers to is called litotes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes), but to say that English doesn’t use them is… not quite right.
Not quite right, but not quite wrong, no? The pattern seems similar, but I think of litotes (as the Wikipedia article suggests) as a rhetorical device: the assertion-by-negation carries an ironic charge, and strikes the (Western) ear by standing out from the ordinary affirmative register.
If I'm understanding the author's account of Chinese assertion-by-negation correctly, doesn't it sound like assertion-by-negation is the ordinary case in that linguistic tradition, and it's the assertive case that jars the ear? Same pattern, different effect?