Begging the question

[minionofmidas]

Learn something new every day. Stupid expression for that, though.

[minionofmidas]

I know what you are getting at, and the problem is that you assume that there must be a certain innate logic to language, much as the original English grammarians did.

Nothing "English" about it. All of these ideas are washed-up Latin has-beens that migrated to other languages.
Although the Sanskrit grammarians developped many very parallel ideas.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nominally. Really, of course, it's because a double negative wasn't done in Classical Latin (although I'm not sure about their reasons). The purging of double negatives from the Germanic languages was part of the campaign to "civilise" them by making them more similar to Latin.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It's not, actually - for the received French grammar isn't an example of a double negative at all, though it looks like one to the casual observer. It's just a negative formation built of two words - ne pas "no step" ie not, ne rien "no thing", ne jamais "no ever" (in these latter two the positive sense is extinct, but that's the etymology), ne que "no but" ie except, ne plus "no more". If these are double negatives then so is English "nothing". They work completely unlike actual double negatives, and "ne" can never stand alone.

However, in the spoken language the ne can indeed be dropped - just a common case of slurred speech. It's a small particle and the meaning of the sentence, except for a few ne...que formations, is immediately obvious without it* - so in a non-historical sense the other word is, indeed, a negative. But you can never learn anything really worthwhile in linguistics without at least a sideglance at historical linguistics.
And here we get to the really interesting point: Because spoken French does indeed have what, viewed ahistorically, are double negatives - real ones this time. In written French these constructions are of course sort-of triple negatives: (ne) plus rien, (ne) plus jamais "not anymore", that sort of thing.

*Of course, this is actually what happened with "I could care less", too.

[minionofmidas]

Let me put it this way... if you had no idea that written French existed, you would think that "pas" and not "ne" was the negative marker.

Absolutely. Which is why "ne" could be omitted - it carries no meaning anymore.

Grammar nazism exists in Germany, too. It exists in France, too. Although often, the focus in these countries has been more on Vocabulary nazism. Indeed, most Germans are probably not aware that Grammar nazism exists in Britain and America - which I suppose has more to do with the quality of journalism (or rather lack of it) than anything else... still, I wouldn't be so sure about English Grammar nazism being particularly bad.
Actually, come to think of it, none of the countries mentioned are within shouting distance of Greek Grammar nazis. Nor able to see eye to eye with Turkish or Basque ones.

Most of my point was a footnote to your point (which is really only that traditional Grammar nazism is pretty damn pointless, and that languages evolve) - the only bit that I was actually contradicting is that "ne pas" is a double negative. It isn't. A double negative is, e.g. "I didn't say nothing" - which colloquial French might render "J'ai pas dit rien", incidentally, also using a double negative, and one as "wrong" in received French as in received English.

[minionofmidas]

The problem with dropping the traditional definition isn't that it's a break with tradition. The problem is that it makes a perfectly good idiom ambiguous.

Hardly. It's not a "perfectly good idiom", nor is it unambiguous. (Or even grammatical.) It is very easy to misunderstand as "that begs for the question", which is not an idiom but is unambiguous (and means exactly what people take "that begs the question" to mean).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Define "moderate".
I would be with you here if, well, if we weren't arguing about exactly the kind of phrase a moderate linguistic conservatism would throw to the dogs.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

the stress being on "readers".

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Not a positive goal by any stretch of the imagination. You're basically saying you're trying to perform forced abortions on emerging languages here.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As it used to be. *Grammatical* change would be comparatively rare, though, the bulk of the change is to pronunciation and vocabulary.

[minionofmidas]

I don't have any problems with double negatives. But that statement above is literally meaning the exact opposite of what it's supposed to mean, and it could easily be fixed with two letters and an apostrophe.

And a double negative is literally meaning the exact opposite of what it's supposed to mean, and it could easily be fixed by the omission of two letters and an apostrophe.

Same diff.

Well, of course; it's not unambiguous any more. That's exactly what I'm complaining about.

No. It never was unambiguous. That's exactly how it came to be used differently.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yeah, I understand what's meant by that - objecting to some linguistic change, not on the grounds that it is change but on the grounds that it's bad. With arguments for why it's bad.
As it so happens, it's exceedingly easy to dress up moronic linguistic conservatism as moderate linguistic conservatism.
And to claim that the misuse of a rather tortured translation for a rather tortured latin rhetorical term for an admittedly rather common type of behavior, by using it for what it sounds like it means usually in contexts where no danger of confusion exists, is somehow... er, relevant... is pretty stunning actually.  (Damn chain clauses. This is actually a perfectly comprehensible sentence if listened to spoken aloud with the stresses in the right place.) Certainly the wrong usage isn't doing any harm to the original phrase.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That is indeed what I'm saying. The purpose of language is communication; not variety.[/quote]No. Language serves many purposes. Communication and Being Different From Other People being two of the most important.

[minionofmidas]

Besides, if noone pronounced "I couldn't care less" as "I could care less", I couldn't then say "I could care less, but it would be pretty hard to do" or "I could care less, but not very much less" or similar.