Learn English – Does double negation turn “neither” into “either”

disjunctiondouble-negationnegation

Peter Guess posted tongue twister with a construct where something occurs that creates what looks like a paradox to me.

neither either…or…or nor neither…nor…nor are either particularly wrong or strictly right

stripping of tonguetwisting:

Neither A nor B are either X or Y.

like in:

— You have a van and a truck. Do you have any red or yellow cars?
— Neither the van nor the truck are either red or yellow. They are both blue.

(meaning both A and B are not X, and they are not Y too.)

But following the common, intuitive usage of:

A is neither X nor Y.

this would seem like the sentence should read

Neither A nor B are neither X nor Y.

What rule is applied here that the negative (neither X nor Y) turns into a positive (either X or Y)? Is the double negation unrolling double-"neither" back into "either"?

Best Answer

Let's simplify it down by turning one of the "multiple choices" into a single value. Like we could say, "Neither the van nor the truck is red." That's pretty clear and unambiguous. The van is not red and the truck is not red.

"Neither" is basically short for "not either". So let's go back to "Neither the van nor the truck is neither red nor yellow." Let's drop the yellow. Now, "neither" is a "negating word", so if there was only one option, it would have to be replaced with "not" or something similar. That would leave us with the analogous sentence, "Neither the van nor the truck is not red." I think that means that both ARE red, but it's a contorted sentence, at best unclear.

So going back to the two-by-two case, I think it follows that if you negate both sides, you turn it into either one of those "double negative equals a positive" cases or just a jumbled mess. You have to make just one side or the other negative. That is, either:

Neither the van nor the truck is either red or yellow.

Or

Both the van and the truck are neither red nor yellow.

Or maybe better still:

The van is neither red nor yellow. The same thing goes for the truck.

:-)

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