FEW grammatical issues in history can have been quite as consequential˳ In Helsinki, Donald Trump rhetorically sized up the statements of his own director of national intelligence against those of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB spy standing a few feet away˳ Did Russia interfere with the election of 2016? “My people came to me˳ They said they think it’s Russia˳ I have President Putin˳ He just said it’s not Russia˳ I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be˳”
Then yesterday, Mr Trump issued what is, for him, a unicorn-feather of a statement, the rarest of things: a retraction˳ “The sentence should have been ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia˳’ Sort of a double negative˳”
But was it a mistake? Could the president have plausibly said the exact opposite of what he meant at such a critical moment? Most commentary has focused on the wider context: the other things Mr Trump said during the press conference, and whether his correction is consonant with them˳ But a little close reading of the sentence in question itself may be helpful too˳
People really do say the opposite of what they mean all the time, a type of error linguists call “misnegation”˳ Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania who runs the Language Log blog, has found dozens of such instances over the years, even in writing˳ People make far more errors in speech˳ Misnegation happens because it can be hard to keep track of the number of negations in a sentence˳ Some negation words are obvious: not is the clearest one in English˳ But there are many other negators: take hardly˳ It seems like an adverb, but in many contexts it is actually a negator: “He is hardly a brilliant negotiator” means he is not a brilliant negotiator˳
As a result many words—some of them obvious, some of them less so—can flip the meaning of a sentence˳ And in longer, more complicated sentences, it is easy to lose track of how many someone has used˳ As Mr Liberman noted, General Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W˳ Bush, said recently:
“I would not be surprised if this were not the last indictment we see that doesn’t mention an American˳”
General Hayden said the opposite of what he meant, if you carefully count up the negations˳ Even three can be enough to lose track of, if the sentence is otherwise slightly complicated; the brain is doing several things at once when speaking, and tracking negations seems to place a heavy load on working memory˳ So do multiple embedded clauses˳ In General Hayden’s case, there is one main clause and three subordinate ones (the negators are indicated in bold)˳
I would not be surprised
If this were not the last indictment
we see
that doesn’t mention an American˳
A third factor, Mr Liberman has found, is “irrealis” clauses, those that mention a hypothetical or currently untrue statement˳ Misnegation often happens in irrealis situations and, here, that “if this were not the last indictment…” clause is just that˳ In other words, this is a canonical misnegation˳ Had Mr Hayden tried a simpler option—“I wouldn’t be surprised if future indictments mention an American,” two clauses, one negation, no irrealis—he surely would have nailed it˳ What General Hayden meant was obvious: he thought that forthcoming indictments would definitely include Americans˳
Is it plausible that Mr Trump misnegated in Helsinki? The eagle-eyed will note just one negative word in his statement: don’t˳ Mr Trump claims a second word should have been negative, too: wouldn’t˳ The differences between General Hayden’s sentence and Mr Trump’s are clear˳ This is a relatively flat sentence˳ In nine words, it has just one subordinate clause: “why it would be”˳ With its four clauses and three negations (where there should have been two), General Hayden’s sentence is not twice as hard but exponentially harder to process than Mr Trump’s˳ In addition, there are no irrealis clauses in Mr Trump’s˳ In other words, this is a pretty straightforward bit of grammar, not the kind that people commonly screw up˳
What about the wider context? Mr Trump said “I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be˳” “I will say this” is kind of a pre-announcement˳ Strictly, nobody needs to say this ever˳ People are always about to say the thing they are about to say˳ But it does serve a function: in effect, “Listen up˳ I’m going to give you a short pause to gather your attention, because this next sentence is particularly important˳” It also gives the speaker a moment to plan˳ This was not a throwaway sentence where Mr Trump’s own attention might have wandered˳ He announced its importance˳
In other words, it’s possible—but highly unlikely—that Mr Trump really misspoke˳ Add in the painful body language and laboured reading of a prepared statement announcing that he had, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that someone convinced him to eat his words from Helsinki upon his return home˳ The damage done remains˳
