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For example, I just saw this phrase on social media:

The way 2020 going, I ain't buyin' no PS5.

I mean, in this instance, I can ultimately see that what the poster actually mean is that "I ain't buyin' any PS5". But I actually saw many instances of phrases like this in the past that's a lot harder to decipher whether the poster actually meant the phrase to be a positive or negative.

Lambie
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Chen Li Yong
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    In many languages - for instance, most of the Romance languages, "double negatives" like these are necessary. In French: je n'* achète pas de PS5*. This is called "negative concord" by linguists. Standard American/British/Canadian/Australian/etc. English does not feature "negative concord." However, some dialects of English do have negative concord. African American Vernacular English is one such dialect (and that's the dialect being used here; the "ain't" is the other big clue). Negative concord has been discussed on this site before. Type that term into the search bar to see. – Juhasz Sep 19 '20 at 16:34
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    The cited usage is probably *deliberately "folksy"* (there's no good reason to assume that whoever wrote it *normally* speaks like that). The *reason* for doing this is usually to inject a note of "authentic realism / genuinely-held belief" (it being supposed that simple-minded folk with limited command of syntax are somehow more "guileless", so anything they say carries "the ring of truth"). Effectively, it's as much a rhetorical technique as a reflection of "sub-standard" AAVE "grammar". – FumbleFingers Sep 19 '20 at 17:07
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    @Juhasz In colloquial French the "ne" is sometimes omitted. Etymologically, "pas", "rien" and "personne" are not negatives, so French grammar only came to express negative concord retroactively once these words were reanalysed as (largely) negative. – rjpond Sep 19 '20 at 18:34
  • @Lambie Ca -> ça ("ca" would be a hard C [k] sound in French pronunciation). I expect you know this, just pointing it out for others. Also "j'achète." – TypeIA Sep 20 '20 at 18:55
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    @rjpond, I was afraid of that. OK, let's try another language with negative concord I'm more confident about, but that fewer people will understand: من هیچ پی اس پنجی نمی خرم In Farsi, هیچ (/hiːtʃ/) is no or none and نمی خرم (/nemiː xæɹæm/) do/will not buy. – Juhasz Sep 21 '20 at 00:03
  • @TypeIA Yeah, the accents didn't come out right. I should not have bothered with this. It is just a pissing contest, anyway. – Lambie Sep 21 '20 at 16:21
  • In fact, in spoken language in French equivalent to this in English, the double negatives are often dropped: Faut pas y aller. or even: T'inquiète, for don't worry or Dis pas ça, for "don't say that". If you're going to compare, you have to compare like to like, discourse-wise. J'achète jamais ça, moi. ne...pas is formal or standard but often not used in connected speech. One should compare like levels of language. But hey,correct my accent marks and above all ignore what I said. Of course, I know the accents, I speak French fluently. But this is just a pissing contest now. – Lambie Sep 21 '20 at 16:22

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For example, AAVE, which is African American Vernacular English, uses double negatives.

AAVE

So do varieties of regional AmE such as southern English.

And ain't (though sometimes used on purpose by educated speakers) is generally classed as dialectal and often places the speakers in a lower social class though it is considered proper dialectal usage in AAVE.

"I ain't [verb] no [noun]" would be very, very common in dialectal speech.

These speech forms can be rich and beautiful and wonderful.

Check out this poem by the great Black American poet Maya Angelou: Ain't That Bad

First, English phrases are not written as double negatives for the kind of example examined here. Second, the sample sentence is an example of how people actually speak.

Lambie
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