Litotes in song

Subject: RE: Litotes in song
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 03:29 AM

No, no, no!!! Don't forget, there must be an element of deliberate understatement: "not a little" instead of "a lot", for example. I'm beginning to see why my old English master Eric Foers used to get so worked up!

Steve

Subject: RE: Litotes in song
From: Suffet
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 07:07 AM

I hope he never came unglued.

Subject: RE: Litotes in song
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 07:34 AM

Bah. I'm always being so damn negative!

Subject: RE: Litotes in song
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 07:58 AM

Hello,

never forget: in a lot of dialects the double negation means not the strong affirmative, but a stronger negation, e.g. "no, sir, I never drank no beer today" as a Bavarian EM told me when questioned about drinking during his duty in the emergency platoon.

The greek word is definitely "litotes" in Greek, not litote. I checked both entries in dictionary.com and found 3 entries for litotes, only 1 for litote. I'm still marvelling why Princeton gives both forms - but who wants to be a Princeton man?

The Latin school where I took my final exam in Greek language and literature was founded in 1543 and they still swear that the correct form is litotes, as I read in every Greek or Latin Grammar in my school days.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Litotes in song
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 08:50 AM

Hello,

thinking it over, I have to add some more remarks:

Not every double negation is a litotes: "Not unusual" must not necessaryly mean "very usual". There is an usual way and there are unusual ways to do a thing (the third way is the Army way, ha ha). "Not unusual" can also denote a way which deviates from the usual, but is still exercised by a minority.

Best example I can find: In former times the men of Rügen (German island) used to wear kilts. Even now it's not unusual to find old men clinging to this custom.

But the original question was about litotes in song. I think that you'll find no litotes in folk songs. Litotes is a highly artistic figure of educated speech used by orators (e.g. Demosthenes, Cicero, few modern politicians), but not by the common man in everyday speech. So I am convinced that my former statement about the double negation is valid: double negation in folksongs will be a strengthening of the simple negation.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Litotes in song
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 03:23 PM

This thread is slowly coming to a point of no return, but I couldn't help adding a Yorkshire version of high praise: "It could be wuss."