This morning on Facebook, Otto Santa Ana added a temporary profile picture:
The X NO KINGS signage, taking us into the territory of “double negation”, since both the X and the NO of NO KINGS convey a variety of negation, namely prohibition
My comment on this image (somewhat edited and amended):
This is a visual version of the linguistic difference between reinforced negation (as in non-standard I don’t see no cats ‘I don’t see any cats’; the phenomenon has several labels) and a negated negative (as in standard [uttered in the face of some enormity] I couldn’t say nothing ‘I was unable to say nothing, I had to say something, I couldn’t stay silent’): an X or a slash (/ or \) over an an image of something or an expression referring to that thing (as in various versions of NO SMOKING signs) normally conveys that that thing is banned, so that the sign above (with a prohibitive X over the expression NO KINGS) would appear to convey a negated negative, conveying that kings are permitted — but of course the sign is intended to be understood as a reinforced negative, with the prohibition rammed home twice, both in the expression NO KINGS and in the prohibitive X.
(In the world of syntax, it’s common for negation to be obligatorily spread over indefinites in the scope of a main negative, so that the negation is, strictly speaking, not emphatically reinforced, just marked in several places.)
On this blog previously, see my 4/28/21 posting “Pictographs for dogs”, on the slashes of prohibition; superimposed X is a variant of these slashes.
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