#negation

The logic of English and Spanish is not different. Not in the way you're thinking.

You don't make it super clear, but I think you're talking about negative concord. Specifically an example like this in Spanish:

No he visto nada not have.1S see nothing

Being interpreted as "I haven't seen anything." First of all, exactly the same thing is possible in English:

I ain't seen nothing.

If you first interpret the above sentence as "I saw something" with the negatives cancelling, you have either retrained yourself too hard for an English teacher or you are trolling. It's a perfectly normal English sentence that unfortunately is looked down on because some people who fundamentally misunderstood the phenomenon decided to make it everyone else's problem.

Now, it is possible for the “two negatives make a positive” to occur. Take the sentence below:

Sue doesn’t think that Jon won’t go.

The only reading of that is that Sue thinks Jon will go — or she at least thinks he’s likely to go. And you’d get the same reading from the Spanish equivalent, Sue no piensa que Jon no va a ir.

The difference is that in Sue doesn’t think Jon won’t go has a clause embedded in another clause, both of them negated. So the negation of Sue doesn’t think… gets applied to Jon won’t go, which is already negative, so it gets flipped back to positive.

People don’t tend to use those true double negatives because they’re hard to parse. You most likely see them when there’s some pragmatic reason to use it, but that’s another can of worms.

Now, I ain’t seen nothing is not like that. It’s just a simple sentence. What is the logic? Well, there’s just one negation.

This phenomenon is called Negative Concord or Negative Agreement. The verb is negated, and then other parts of the sentence (like the pronoun nothing) agree with that negation. Now, in Spanish, this is totally obligatory: negating the verb requires you to use some negative nouns and pronouns. English has an alternative: I ain’t seen anything,* (or I haven’t seen anything) and some people think this is the only way.

It’s possible in English to also force the negative cancelling by stressing a negated noun/pronoun (I ain’t seen nothing), but the default reading is the negative concord reading for most speakers.

It is also possible to have a language that doesn’t allow negative concord at all. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is Mandarin, and the thing is Mandarin just doesn’t negate nouns or pronouns at all, so maybe someone out there has a better example.

By clearing the ground, we enable the possibility of building anew. We gift ourselves a fresh opportunity to think clearly about what we most need and to put our time and effort towards building something even better than what we already have.

Negation #3 (March, 2002)

I cannot be a Christian, or a Catholic, or a Pagan, or a Sufi, or anything, not because I deny, exclude or reject any of these things, but because I Embrace All things, I am All Encompassing, All Loving, and All Accepting. To choose a specific worldview and way, would limit me greatly, and I would actually feel emotional and mental pain inside me, culminating all into an actual physical pain inside me, from limiting my own Self so much. I literally cannot be only one particular way or have one particular view of Life, as I would harm myself if I did. I see Equality in All, Equality in Difference, as well as Equality in Sameness. I cannot be anyone but myself. If I limit myself to a specific religion or belief system, I cannot Be. I am not a Christian, I am not a Hindu, I am not a Pagan, I am not a Catholic, I am not even Eclectic. The best way to describe me, is just….. I Am. I do not mean to be egotistical with this. I just Understand. I Am. 

I am not what you think, I am not what you perceive, I am not what even I may think sometimes, I Transcend, I am All Embracing, All Encompassing of All things. But because I Embrace All, I Transcend All too. When you Embrace All, you don’t limit yourself to one or a few things, and you don’t see yourself as anything, you see Equally. You become All, but becoming All, means that you have to actually see Equality in All, Love All, Encompass All. In Encompassing All, you are not biased or prejudiced, so you are not limited in your thinking that one way is better than the other, and in doing so, limit yourself to that one way and think you are that. In limiting yourself, you limit what you are, can be, can see, and can perceive. THINGS are limited, the human being, isn’t. 

But people think they are some THING. An object. Objects are limited, we as Beings beyond even the concept of Beings, are not, in Reality. I am not a thing, I Am. To be All Encompassing of Everything, you have to be and see Equality in order to be All Encompassing of Everything, and in doing so, you will Transcend All, for if you see Equality in All, the Scales are Equally Balanced, and that means you don’t blind yourself to a particular thing, way of Being etc, so because of that, you Transcend All, as you are None of these things, too. You become Everything and Nothing, beyond even the concept of Everything and Nothing. You just Transcend Beyond. Beyond All things.

I Am.

EDIT: In fact, thinking about it, there are no words that could encapsulate this Understanding. To say you are Transcendent and not limited, means that you are some THING. I say this, what I have said, and all that I say, as concepts, to try to point to what is Beyond even the concept of what I am talking about, as once you bring it into form, into speech, into thought, it automatically limits what you are trying to get across, an Understanding that is Beyond the concepts, Beyond the mind, Beyond All things, becomes limited once you speak it, write it, think of it, as it becomes a creation, and creation automatically and inherently limits.

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Only Breath by Rumi

“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, Not Hindu

Buddhist, sufi or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East

or the west, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any 

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two

worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that

breath breathing, human being.”