In English, "double negatives," or, as linguists prefer to call it, negative agreement or negative concord, goes back all the way to Anglo-Saxon where we find sentences like the following, written out lazily in modern spelling:
- Ne bith thaer naenig aelo gebrowen mid Estum.
not be there not-any beer brewed among (the) Estonians.
Bishop Lowth was able to do this in part because English does offer its speakers choices:
- I don't see anything.
- I don't see nothing.
- I see nothing.
- Yo no veo nada.
I not see nothing
'I don't see anything'