One important thing to realize is that different dialects of English have slightly different grammars.
One place where different dialects differ is around negation. Some dialects, like Appalachian English or West Texas English, exhibit ‘negative concord’, where parts of a sentence must agree in negation. For example, “Nobody ain’t doin’ nothing’ wrong”.
One of the most important thing to understanding a sentence is to figure out the dialect of its speaker. You’ll also notice that with sentences with ambiguous terminology like “he ate biscuits” - were they cookies, or something that looked like a scone? Rules are always contextual, based on the variety of the language being spoken.
How would Appalachian English say “Don’t not go there”? Even languages that only use negative concord have constructions to do double negatives, in Russian that’s done like “This is not unprovable” vs. “This is provable”, with “un-” (“без- / бес-”) being a very productive modifier. Sometimes the double negation becomes so common that it becomes part of the word, say небезопасный, “nonundangerous”.
I would expect, in practice, something like “Don’t stay away from there” but as we’re talking about a dialect continuum it doesn’t sound terribly unlikely for people to simply switch grammar (not necessarily phonetics or lexicon) to a dialect in which there’s no negative concord. And that, mostly, is what I mean by “ambiguous”.
One important thing to realize is that different dialects of English have slightly different grammars.
One place where different dialects differ is around negation. Some dialects, like Appalachian English or West Texas English, exhibit ‘negative concord’, where parts of a sentence must agree in negation. For example, “Nobody ain’t doin’ nothing’ wrong”.
One of the most important thing to understanding a sentence is to figure out the dialect of its speaker. You’ll also notice that with sentences with ambiguous terminology like “he ate biscuits” - were they cookies, or something that looked like a scone? Rules are always contextual, based on the variety of the language being spoken.
How would Appalachian English say “Don’t not go there”? Even languages that only use negative concord have constructions to do double negatives, in Russian that’s done like “This is not unprovable” vs. “This is provable”, with “un-” (“без- / бес-”) being a very productive modifier. Sometimes the double negation becomes so common that it becomes part of the word, say небезопасный, “nonundangerous”.
I would expect, in practice, something like “Don’t stay away from there” but as we’re talking about a dialect continuum it doesn’t sound terribly unlikely for people to simply switch grammar (not necessarily phonetics or lexicon) to a dialect in which there’s no negative concord. And that, mostly, is what I mean by “ambiguous”.