Not all your dreams may come true.

Question

How are you, everyone? 1. Not all your dreams may come true. (partial negation) 2. None of your dreams may come true. (total negation in my opinion) One of my friend told me the total negation of above no.1 through 'Double negative' should be read as follows; 3. Not all your dreams may not come true. Thus, I would hope to hear your clear answer to my following questions; 1) the exact meaning of above no. 3 2) if no.3 could be really the total negation for no.1?  If so, do the natives use this kind of no.3 expression in daily life? I think no.3 is wrong expression using the technique - 'Double negation', which should have been written as per no.2, while I think we sometimes need the 'double negative' to emphasize strong affirmation indeed. would hope to hear soon, and thanking in advance,

GPY · Accepted Answer

deepcosmos3. Not all your dreams may not come true.

You may consider this sentence incorrect. It certainly does not mean the same as (2).

CalifJim · Answer

deepcosmos1. Not all your dreams may come true. (partial negation)
2. None of your dreams may come true. (total negation in my opinion)

These labels don't work for the modal verb "may" (or "might").

1) is logically
It may be the case that not all your dreams will come true.

But this is equivalent to
It may be the case or it may not be the case that not all your dreams will come true.

Which is equivalent to 3).

That's because "It may be the case that ..." and "It may not be case that ..." are always true. Their logical truth values are the same, namely, "TRUE".

The same reasoning applies to 2), which would be equivalent to

None of your dreams may not come true.
(It may be the case or it may not be the case that none of your dreams will come true.)

So while the idea of "partial negation" and "total negation" may apply to the grammatical construction, they don't apply to the logical content of those sentences.

It would be better to substitute 'will' for 'may' and proceed that way if you want to understand negations.

1. Not all your dreams will come true. (partial negation)
2. None of your dreams will come true. (total negation)

1. At least one of your dreams will fail to come true.
2. All of your dreams will fail to come true.

The negations are

1n. Not all your dreams will not come true.
2n. None of your dreams will not come true.

1n. At least one of your dreams will come true.
2n. All of your dreams will come true.

As I suspect you already know, in daily life we usually say the form with the fewest negations.

CJ

Not all your dreams may come true.

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions