Oh Sidney, you wag
May 25, 2011 5 Comments
A linguistics professor lecturing at Oxford explained that although there are many languages in which a double negative implies a positive, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative.
He was interrupted by legendary philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, who piped up dismissively from the audience, “Yeah, yeah.”
That rules 🙂
Correction: the lecturer was *from* Oxford, but the lecture was *at* Columbia. Morgenbesser was a native New Yorker and I think that shows in his sense of humor.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-sidney-morgenbesser-550224.html
“Morgenbesser learned the fine art of kibitzing from his father, a garment worker in the Lower East Side of New York who can never have suspected how Jewish humour could be so witheringly applied to metaphysics and epistemology.”
The lecturer wasn’t a linguist, or at least not exactly: he was the ordinary language philosopher J.L. Austin. At least, this is according to Jim Holt’s “Stop Me if You’ve Heard This…”
I heard this told about a lecture given in Scotland; the audience member’s comment is that uniquely Scottish expression of disbelief, “Aye, right!”