Does double negation make sentences ambiguous? [closed]

Question

I'm having a discussion about if this sentence is logically right or wrong or ambiguous.

What do you think?

If you do not at least have one or two beliefs that your culture would not retaliate against you for voicing, you ultimately do not have any beliefs, only echoes.

Answer 1

would not retaliate ≠ would retaliate

This is not double negation. Double negation is a doubled negator in the same clause, like saying not not in I haven’t NOT said anything. It is not ambiguous because the second negator cancels out the first, yielding a logical result that you have said something after all.

But that’s not what your sentence is doing. Your subordinate clause instead has a spurious negation inserted before retaliate, one which makes no sound sense for the meaning you’re attempting to convey here:

1. If you do not at least have one or two beliefs that your culture would not retaliate against you for voicing, you ultimately do not have any beliefs, only echoes.

This class of mistake can sometimes be seen when translating too literally from a source language that has different rules about negation and negative concord than English has. For example, French infamously has a ne explétif under certain sorts of clauses. So a sentence like:

2. Unless your culture would retaliate against you for expressing at least one or two of your beliefs, you ultimately have no beliefs at all, only echoes.

might show up in French with an extra ne inserted before the retaliation verb, something along the lines of:

3. À moins que ta culture ne riposte contre toi pour avoir exprimé au moins une ou deux de tes croyances, tu n’as finalement aucune croyance, juste des échos.

When you translate such clauses into English, you must ignore that ‘extra’ would-be negator to produce a simpler construction. That’s because it is not here a negator in French, just something mechanical one sometimes does.