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"As long as" in a sentence with two negatives

English Language & Usage Asked by TFlo83 on October 12, 2020

A Japanese friend of mine told me that, according to some articles that she read online (written in Japanese), the following sentence is incorrect:

“She won’t forgive you as long as you don’t apologize to her.”

She doesn’t understand why it would be considered incorrect, as we use ‘as long as’ with two negative verbs all the time (e.g. It won’t break as long as you don’t touch it).

That said, as a native speaker, it intuitively rubs me the wrong way, and ‘if’ seems to be the obvious choice here. So, is it grammatically incorrect? And if so, why? Any insights would be appreciated.

2 Answers

"She won't forgive you as long as you don't apologize to her", is apparently not wrong. The same sentence can be rewritten in a lot of ways, like:

She won't forgive you until you apologize to her. She won't forgive you unless you apologize to her. She won't forgive you until and unless you apologize to her. She will forgive you if you apologize to her.

Using two negative clauses in a complex sentence is acceptable.

Answered by Ram Pillai on October 12, 2020

The sentence is grammatical, but it's pragmatically odd, because one major use of as long as is to introduce a sufficient condition for a desired outcome. (Merriam-Webster gives that use as sense #1, with the definition "provided that". [link]) So the sentence makes it sound like the speaker thinks the interlocutor might be trying to avoid being forgiven, and is either offering advice on how to do that or offering reassurance that the interlocutor's strategy is sufficient to achieve that . . . which is bizarre, because it's highly unusual to think that that might be someone's goal. It's so strange, in fact, that if the suggestion were made more explicit, we would interpret it as intentionally ironic. (Something like "If you don't want her to forgive you, don't worry, all you've got to do is keep on not apologizing" would really mean "You need to apologize.") But as long as isn't quite explicit enough to trigger this ironic interpretation.

Answered by ruakh on October 12, 2020

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